10 


ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 


ESSAYS 
ON  AGRICULTURE 

EDITED  BY 

SHIRLEY  DARE  BABBITT 

Head  Department  of  English 

L.  C.  Smith  School  of  Applied  Science 

Syracuse  University 

AND 

LOWRY  CHARLES  WIMBERLY 

Instructor  in  English,  University 
of  Nebraska 


(>. 


,^>> 


XV  y--  ^° 


By, 


GARDEN   CITY,    N.    Y.,   AND   TORONTO 

DOUBLEDAY,  PAGE  &  COMTANY 
1921 


COPYRIGHT,  1921,  BY 

DOUBLEDAY,  PAGE  &  COMPANY 

ALL  RIGHTS  BESER\'ED,  ENCLtJDING  THAT  OF 

TRANSLATION  INTO  FOREIGN  LANGUAGES, 

INCLUDING  THE  SCANDINAVIAN 


PRINTED  AT  QAnDEN  riTT,  N.  T.,  C.  3.   A. 


555.1 
3(|e- 


■to 

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3  ACKNOWLEDGMENT 

The  editors  wish  to  take  this  opportunity  to  thank 

both  authors  and  publishers  for  permission  to  reprint 
g?  the  essays  in  this  book.    It  is  also  their  desire  to  express 

their  gratitude  for  the  help  and  encouragement  given 
^-  them  by  Dr.  Louise  Pound  of  the  Department  of 
uj  English,   University    of   Nebraska,    and    Dean    E.    A. 

Burnett  of  the  College  of  Agriculture,  University  of 

Nebraska. 


Q 


275402 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

in  2008  with  funding  from 

IVIicrosoft  Corporation 


http://www.archive.org/details/essaysonagricultOObabb 


CONTENTS 

Introduction ix 

THE  DIGNITY  OF  FARMING 

tAPTEH  PAGE 

I.     Farming Ralph    Waldo  Emerson        1 

II.     The    Holy   Earth     .     .     Liberty  H.  Bailey  It' 

III.  The  Love  of  Nature     .     Mrs.  Schuyler  Va/n 

Rensselaer  26 

IV.  Civic  Art Frank    Waugh  36 

V.     The  Art  of  Gardening     Mrs.  Schuyler  Van 

Rensselaer  47 

VI.     Culture    and    Agricut,- 

ture I'\    ir.   Howe  61 

THE  FARMER  OF  THE  PRESENT 

VII.  The  Farmer:  The  Coe- 
ner-Stone  of  Civiliza- 
tion     Theodore  Roosevelt  79 

VIII.     The   New   Farmer     .     .    Kenyan  L.  Butterfield       91 
IX.     The    New    Call    to    the 

Farm T.  Bayard  Collins  101 

X.    The    Problems   of    Pro- 
gress     Kenyan   L.  Butterfield      116 

XI.     The  Nature  of  the  Prob- 
lem      Liberty  H.  Bailey  139 

XII.     The     Man    Who    Works 

with  His  Hands     .     .     Theodore   Roosevelt  145 

XIII.  The  Country  Girl     .     .     Martha  Foote   Crow         165 

THE  FARMER  AS  A  MAN  OF  BUSINESS 

XIV.  Business     Methods     in 

Farming Oscar  H.  Benson  179 

XV.     Farm    Management  —  A 

New  Science  .     .     .     .     W.  J.  Spillman  187 

XVI.  How  the  Government 
Works       with       the 

Farmer Daind  F.  Houston  195 

XVII.     Principles     of    EuRorriAN 

Land  Credits       .     .     .     Dick    T.   Morgan  210 

XVIII.     Reducing     tiii;     Cost     of 
Living  —    A      Common 

Problem Edwin   T.  Meredith  229 

XIX.  Agricultural  Readjust- 
ment AND  THE  High 
Cost  of  Living    .     .     .     Herbert  Hoover  236 


vm 


CONTENTS 


THE  FARMER  AS  A  SCIENTIST 

XX.     Thiumphs     of     Scientific 

AoRiccxTtJEE    ....     George   W.  Fiske  269 

XXI.     On    the    Physical    Basis 

OF  Life Thomas   H.    Huxley         288 

XXII.     New  Plant  Immigrants    David   Fairchild  301 

XXIII.  Bacteria    and    Soil    Feu- 

TiLiTY P.  E.  Brown  316 

XXIV.  Worms  and  the  Soil     .    Charles  Darwin  325 
XXV.    The  Struggle  for  Exist- 
ence     Thomas    H.    Hxi^'ley  331 

XXVI.     Electricity      Advancing 

Farm   Prosperity    .     .    James   Burton  34.3 

XXVII.    The  Gasoline  Engine  on 

THE  Farm Xeno  W.  Putnam  350 


OUR  FOREFATHERS  AND  FARMING 

XXVIII.     The   Rural  Socrates     .     B.   C.   Hirze!  359 

XXIX.     Extracts  from  a  Diary     George    Washington  367 
XXX.    A      Letter     to     Thomas 

Jefferson George  Washington  371 

XXXI.     Lincoln  on  Agriculture    Abraham   Lincoln  374 
XXXII.     The  Excellences  of  Agri- 

cuLTUBK  r. Xenophon  390 


INTRODUCTION 

A  BOOK  of  essays  for  use  as  illustrative  material  in 
courses  in  composition  scarcely  needs  an  apology.  The 
specimen  method  has  long  since  proved  itself  pedagogi- 
cally  sound,  and  an  invaluable  aid  to  those  confronted 
with  the  problem  of  teaching  others  to  write.  Hence, 
the  editors  of  the  present  collection  of  essays,  addresses, 
and  articles,  for  courses  in  composition  in  agricultural 
colleges,  can,  in  a  way,  make  no  claim  to  originality. 
They  feel  a  certain  pride,  however,  in  being  among  the 
first  to  attempt  to  extend  the  usefulness  of  a  sound 
principle  of  pedagogy,  and  to  infuse  new  blood,  so  to 
speak,  into  an  old  idea. 

An  idea  or  principle,  however  sound,  is  in  danger  of 
outliving  its  usefulness,  unless  it  is  given  repeated  and 
fresh  application.  Any  system  stands  or  falls  in 
accordance  with  its  adaptability  to  new  conditions. 
Any  plan  of  teaching  becomes  ineffective  once  it  shows 
itself  inflexible  and  incapable  of  growth.  The  present 
editors,  after  experience  with  many  types  of  students, 
have  felt  for  some  time  that  the  specimen-book,  unless 
kept  alive  by  contact  with  the  demands  of  the  hour,  is 
in  a  fair  way  to  share  the  fate  of  certain  other  academic 
traditions,  and  to  become  so  much  pedagogical  lumber. 
It  is  liable,  in  other  words,  to  become  "class-worn,"  to 
become  a  commonplace,  and  thereby  cease  to  make  its 
presence  felt.  A  recent  textbook  on  English  composi- 
tion has  gone  so  far  as  to  taboo  the  traditional  expres- 


X  INTRODUCTION 

sion,  theme,  as  being  stereotyped,  and,  because  of  its 
classroom  associations,  too  unsuggestive  of  the  practical 
problems  of  writing.  The  theme  is  to  be  written,  of 
course,  but  not  under  that  nrame,  and  is  no  longer  to  be 
recognized  as  a  kind  of  writing  peculiar  to  students  and 
to  text-books  on  rhetoric.  It  is  in  some  such  manner 
that  the  editors  of  "Essays  on  Agriculture"  have  come 
to  regard  the  specimen  method.  An  invaluable  method, 
it  must  not  be  allowed  to  die  of  that  academic  inertia 
which  always  results  from  failure  on  the  part  of  the 
instructor  to  appreciate  those  new  problems  which  are 
constantly  arising  wherever  there  is  life  and  progress. 

A  new  problem,  and  one  of  vital  import  for  the 
instructor  in  composition,  is  that  of  meeting  the  peculiar 
needs  of  the  technical  student.  The  recognition  of 
agriculture  as  among  the  chief  branches  of  modem 
learning,  the  growing  tendency  toward  specialization  in 
the  field  of  agriculture,  and  the  consequent  enlargement 
of  the  curriculum  of  the  college  of  agriculture,  make 
it  imperative  that  the  instructor  in  even  so  general  a 
subject  as  composition  consult  the  requirements  of  the 
hour,  and,  if  he  is  teaching  agricultural  students,  recog- 
nize at  once  that  his  methods  of  teaching  must  take  care 
of  the  special  problems  of  such  students.  Old  means,  if 
employed  here  at  all,  must  be  employed  under  new  and 
particular  conditions.  If  the  specimen  method  is  indis- 
pensable in  courses  where  the  student  is  seeking  only  a 
general  education,  how,  the  question  arises,  may  it  be 
made  most  effective  in  courses  where  the  aim  of  the 
student  is  more  special.?  If  it  serves  the  purposes  of 
the  student  of  liberal  arts,  how  may  it  best  serve  the 
purposes  of  the  student  of  agriculture?     It  is  through 


INTRODUCTION  xi 

an  earnest  desire  to  answer  this  question  satisfactorily 
far  themselves  and  for  others  that  the  present  editors 
have  prepared  "Essays  on  Agriculture." 

As  indicated  above,  the  general  purpose  of  this  col- 
lection of  essays  is  quite  in  keeping  with  the  aims  of 
other  books  of  model  selections  for  use  in  composition, 
and  the  editors  feel  safe  in  taking  for  granted  that  the 
instructor  has  a  close  familiarity  with  the  specimen 
method.  The  study  of  composition  through  the 
analysis  and  imitation  of  effective  pieces  of  style  has 
had  such  vogue  of  late  years,  that  material  selected 
for  such  study  takes  its  place  immediately  as  an 
integral  part  of  any  practical  course  in  writing.  The 
essays  in  the  present  collection  may  be  studied  with  a 
view  to  imitation  from  the  standpoint  of  both  form 
and  content.  The  principles  which  underlie  successful 
organization  in  writing  may  here  be  seen  in  operation. 
Systematic  rhetoric  is  not  to  be  decried;  rather,  it  is 
presupposed,  but  the  editors  of  "Essays  on  Agricul- 
ture" believe  that  the  student  of  composition  is  not 
unlike  the  student  of  engineering,  in  that  he  learns  a 
great  deal  when  given  an  opportunity  to  hear  the  hum 
of  machinery  and  to  watch  the  actual  "wheels  go 
round."  In  addition  to  serving  as  examples  of  effective 
writing,  the  essays  furnish  an  invaluable  source  for 
discussions  and  for  stimulation  of  thought.  They  pro- 
vide an  extensive  fund  of  laboratory  material  for  oral 
and  written  discussion. 

The  instructor  in  composition  feels  that  the  battle 
is  more  than  half  won,  if  he  can  bring  the  student  to 
the  point  of  wanting  to  write.  But  because  of  the 
virtual   identity   of  style   and   substance,   of   form   and 


xii  INTRODUCTION 

content,  it  is  generally  true  that  one  does  not  have  an 
impulse  to  write,  unless  one  has  something  to  say.  It 
becomes  the  duty  of  the  instructor,  then,  to  help  the 
beginning  writer  not  only  as  regards  expression,  or  mere 
form,  but  as  regards  ideas  as  well.  It  is  the  experience 
of  most  teachers  that  a  student  is  quick  to  respond 
when  in  the  presence  of  that  which  is  familiar  and 
interesting,  but  is,  on  the  whole,  apathetic  and  indif- 
ferent toward  that  which  is  remote  and  of  no  concern 
to  him.  Obviously,  the  student  of  agriculture  is  inter- 
ested in  agriculture.  He  likes  to  talk  about  the  problems 
of  farm  life — the  movement  away  from  the  country  to 
the  city,  the  best  methods  of  farming,  the  successful 
management  of  an  eighty-acre  farm,  the  relation  of  the 
farmer  to  the  government,  or  the  place  of  the  farm  in 
the  economic  world.  If  he  is  so  ready  and  so  eager  to 
talk  about  matters  relating  to  agriculture,  it  should  not 
be  difficult  to  interest  him  in  writing  about  such  matters. 
It  only  remains  to  show  him  that  the  written  word  is 
quite  as  natural  a  means  of  expression  as  the  spoken 
word.  Like  other  people,  the  student  of  agriculture  is 
reticent  about  that  of  which  he  knows  nothing,  but  is 
communicative  in  regard  to  that  which  he  knows. 

"Essays  on  Agriculture"  is  an  attempt  to  meet  the 
student  of  agriculture  on  his  own  ground,  an  endeavor 
to  obviate  those  many  problems  which  invariably  arise 
when  the  student  is  required  to  write  about  subjects 
which  are  unfamiliar  and  of  no  immediate  concern  to 
him.  It  is  an  effort  to  show  the  student  of  agriculture 
that  he,  too,  has  a  place  in  the  sun,  to  help  him  see 
that  he  has  something  to  say,  that  he  has  an  abundance 
of  material  ready  at  hand,  a  wealth  of  ideas  eminently 


INTRODUCTION  xiii 

worthy  of  expression,  to  make  him  realize  that  not  only 
does  he  have  material  and  ideas,  but  also  to  make  him 
see  that  agriculture  is  of  enough  significance  to  occupy 
his  most  careful  attention,  that  it  has  occupied  the 
attention  of  such  thinkers  as  Emerson,  Lincoln,  and 
Washington,  and  that  at  the  present  time  it  is  taking 
its  proper  and  lofty  place  in  the  affairs  of  the  world. 
It  is  an  attempt,  among  other  things,  to  make  the 
student  of  agriculture  believe  in  himself,  and  have  faith 
in  his  calling;  for  without  faith  there  can  be  no  prog- 
ress. The  present  editors  feel  that  such  a  student  will 
want  to  write,  once  he  sees  that  his  ideas  are  no  less 
worthy  of  being  spoken  of  and  written  about  than  are 
the  ideas  of  the  educator,  the  doctor,  the  preacher,  the 
lawyer,  or  the  man  of  business.  The  material  for  the 
present  collection  has  been  chosen  with  various  require- 
ments in  mind.  Some  of  the  essays  have  historical  inter- 
est ;  some  are  literary  in  character ;  others  are  quite 
technical  or  scientific ;  most  of  them,  as  is  to  be  expected 
in  a  book  of  this  kind,  are  of  a  widely  practical  nature. 
On  the  whole,  an  eifort  has  been  made  to  glean  articles 
which  would  be,  not  only  of  instructive,  but  of  inspira- 
tional value  as  well.  Touching  as  it  does,  then,  in  one 
way  or  another,  upon  the  general  matters  of  agricul- 
ture, this  book  should  help  the  student  of  agriculture 
approach  the  problems  of  life  from  his  own  point 
of  view,  should  aid  him  in  realizing  his  fundamental  rela- 
tion to  his  fellow-man,  and  should  encourage  and  guide 
him  in  interpreting,  in  his  own  way,  these  problems  and 
this  relationship. 


THE  DIGNITY  OF  FAHMING 


I 

FARMING* 
Ralph  Waldo  Emerson  ,) 


The  glory  of  the  farmer  is  that,  in  the  division  of 
labors,  it  is  his  part  to  create.  All  trade  rests  at  last 
on  his  primitive  activity.  He  stands  close  to  Nature: 
he  obtains  from  the  earth  the  bread  and  the  meat.  The 
food  which  was  not,  he  causes  to  be.  The  farmer  was 
the  first  man,  and  all  historic  nobility  rests  on  posses- 
sion and  use  of  land.  Men  do  not  like  hard  work,  but 
every  man  has  an  exceptional  respect  for  tillage,  and  a 
feeling  that  this  is  the  original  calling  of  his  race,  that 
he  himself  is  only  excused  from  it  by  some  circumstance 
which  made  him  delegate  it  for  a  time  to  other  hands. 
If  he  have  not  some  skill  which  recommends  him  to  the 
farmer,  some  product  for  which  the  farmer  will  give  him 
corn,  he  must  himself  return  into  his  due  place  among 
the  planters.  And  the  profession  has  in  all  eyes  its 
ancient  charm,  as  standing  nearest  to  God,  the  first 
cause. 

Then  the  beauty  of  Nature,  the  tranquillity  and  inno- 
cence of  the  countryman,  his  independence,  and  his  pleas- 
ing arts, — the  care  of  bees,  of  poultry,  of  sheep,  of  cows, 
the  dairy,  the  care  of  hay,  of  fruits,  of  orchards  and 
forests,  and  the  reaction  of  these  on  the  workman,  in 
giving  him  a  strength  and  plain  dignity,  like  the  face 

*  From  "Society  and  Solitude,"  by  permission  of  Houghton  Mifflin 
Company. 

1 


■^ 


ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 


and  manners  of  Nature,  all  men  acknowledge.  All  men 
keep  the  farm  in  reserve  as  an  asylum  where,  in  case  of 
mischance,  to  hide  their  poverty, — or  a  solitude,  if  they 
do  not  succeed  in  society.  And  who  knows  how  many 
glances  of  remorse  are  turned  this  way  from  the  bank- 
rupts of  trade,  from  mortified  pleaders  in  courts  and 
senates,  or  from  the  victims  of  idleness  and  pleasure? 
Poisoned  by  town  life  and  town  vices,  the  sufferer 
resolves:  "Well,  my  children,  whom  I  have  injured, 
shall  go  back  to  the  land,  to  be  recruited  and  cured  by 
that  which  should  have  been  my  nursery,  and  now  shall 
be  their  hospital." 

The  farmer's  office  is  precise  and  important,  but  you 
must  not  try  to  paint  him  in  rose-color;  you  cannot 
make  pretty  compliments  to  fate  and  gravitation,  whose 
minister  he  is.  He  represents  the  necessities.  It  is  the 
beauty  of  the  great  economy  of  the  world  that  makes  his 
comeliness.  He  bends  to  the  order  of  the  seasons,  the 
weather,  the  soils  and  crops,  as  the  sails  of  a  ship  bend 
to  the  wind.  He  represents  continuous  hard  labor,  year 
in,  year  out,  and  small  gains.  He  is  a  slow  person,  timed 
to  Nature,  and  not  to  city  watches.  He  takes  the  pace 
of  seasons,  plants,  and  chemistry.  Nature  never  hur- 
ries: atom  by  atom,  little  by  little,  she  achieves  her 
work.  The  lesson  one  learns  in  fishing,  yachting,  hunt- 
ing, or  planting,  is  the  manners  of  Nature;  patience 
with  the  delays  of  wind  and  sun,  delays  of  the  seasons, 
bad  weather,  excess  or  lack  of  water, — ^patience  with  the 
slowness  of  our  feet,  with  the  parsimony  of  our  strength, 
with  the  largeness  of  sea  and  land  we  must  traverse,  etc. 
The  farmer  times  himself  to  Nature,  and  acquires  that 
livelong  patience  which  belongs  to  her.     Slow,  narrow 


FARMING  3 

man,  his  rule  is,  that  the  earth  shall  feed  and  clothe  him ; 
and  he  must  wait  for  his  crop  to  grow.  His  entertain- 
ments, his  liberties,  and  his  spending  must  be  on  a 
farmer's  scale,  and  not  on  a  merchant's.  It  were  as  false 
for  farmers  to  use  a  wholesale  and  massy  expense,  as 
for  states  to  use  a  minute  economy.  But  if  thus  pinched 
on  one  side,  he  has  compensatory  advantages.  He  is 
permanent,  clings  to  his  land  as  the  rocks  do.  In  the 
town  where  I  live,  farms  remain  in  the  same  families 
for  seven  and  eight  generations ;  and  most  of  the  first 
settlers  (in  1635),  should  they  reappear  on  the  farms 
today,  would  find  their  own  blood  and  names  still  in 
possession.  And  the  like  fact  holds  in  the  surrounding 
towns. 

This  hard  work  will  always  be  done  by  one  kind  of 
man ;  not  by  scheming  speculators,  not  by  soldiers,  nor 
professors,  nor  readers  of  Tennyson,  but  by  men  of 
endurance, — deep-chested,  long-winded,  tough,  slow  and 
sure,  and  timely.  The  farmer  has  a  great  health,  and 
the  appetite  of  health,  and  means  to  his  end:  he  has 
broad  lands  for  his  home,  wood  to  burn  great  fires, 
plenty  of  plain  food ;  his  milk,  at  least,  is  unwatered : 
and  for  sleep,  he  has  cheaper  and  better  and  more  of  it 
than  citizens. 

He  has  grave  trusts  confided  to  him.  In  the  great 
household  of  Nature,  the  farmer  stands  at  the  door  of 
the  bread-room,  and  weighs  to  each  his  loaf.  It  is  for 
him  to  say  whether  men  shall  marry  or  not.  Early 
marriages  and  the  number  of  births  are  indissolubly 
connected  with  alaundance  of  food ;  or,  as  Burke  said, 
"Man  breeds  at  the  mouth."  Then  he  is  the  Board  of 
Quarantine.    The  farmer  is  a  hoarded  capital  of  health. 


4  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

as  the  farm  is  the  capital  of  wealth ;  and  it  is  from  him 
that  the  health  and  power,  moral  and  intellectual,  of 
the  cities  came.  The  city  is  always  recruited  from  the 
country.  The  men  in  cities  who  are  the  centers  of 
energy,  the  driving-wheels  of  trade,  politics,  or  practical 
arts,  and  the  Avomen  of  beauty  and  genius  are  the  chil- 
dren or  grandchildren  of  farmers,  and  are  spending  the 
energies  which  their  fathers'  hardy,  silent  life  accumu- 
lated in  frosty  furrows,  in  poverty,  necessity,  and 
darkness. 

He  is  the  continuous  benefactor.  He  who  digs  a  well, 
constructs  a  stone  fountain,  plants  a  grove  of  trees  by 
the  roadside,  plants  an  orchard,  builds  a  durable  house, 
reclaims  a  swamp,  or  so  much  as  puts  a  stone  seat  by 
the  wayside,  makes  the  land  so  far  lovely  and  desirable, 
makes  a  fortune  which  he  cannot  carry  away  with  him, 
but  which  is  useful  to  his  country  long  afterwards.  The 
man  that  works  at  home  helps  society  at  large  with 
somewhat  more  of  certainty  than  he  who  devotes  him- 
self to  charities.  If  it  be  true  that,  not  by  votes  of 
political  parties,  but  by  the  eternal  laws  of  political 
economy,  slaves  are  driven  out  of  a  slave  State  as  fast 
as  it  is  surrounded  by  free  States,  then  the  true  aboli- 
tionist is  the  farmer,  who,  heedless  of  laws  and  consti- 
tutions, stands  all  day  in  the  field,  investing  his  labor 
in  the  land,  and  making  a  product  with  which  no  forced 
labor  can  compete. 

We  commonly  say  that  the  rich  man  can  speak  the 
truth,,  can  afford  honesty,  can  afford  independence  of 
opinion  and  action ; — and  that  is  the  theory  of  nobility. 
But  it  is  the  rich  man  in  a  true  sense,  that  is  to  say, 
not  the  man  of  large  income  and  large  expenditure,  but 


FARMING  6 

solely  the  man  whose  outlay  is  less  than  his  income  and 
is  steadily  kept  so. 

In  English  factories,  the  boy  that  watches  the  loom, 
to  ti^  the  thread  when  the  wheel  stops  to  indicate  that 
a  thread  is  broken,  is  called  a  mmder.  And  in  this  great 
factory  of  our  Copernican  globe,  shifting  its  slides, 
rotating  its  constellations,  times,  and  tides,  bringing  now 
the  day  of  planting,  then  of  watering,  then  of  weeding, 
then  of  reaping,  then  of  curing  and  storing, — -the  fanner 
is  the  minder.  His  machine  is  of  colossal  proportions, 
— the  diameter  of  the  water-wheel,  the  arms  of  the  levers, 
the  power  of  the  battery,  are  out  of  all  mechanic 
measure ; — and  it  takes  him  long  to  understand  its  parts 
and  its  working.  This  pump  never  "sucks" ;  these 
screws  are  never  loose  ;  this  machine  is  never  out  of  gear; 
the  vat  and  piston,  wheels  and  tires,  never  wear  out,  but 
are  self-repairing. 

Who  are  the  farmer's  servants?  Not  the  Irish,  nor 
the  coolies,  but  Geology  and  Chemistry,  the  quarry  of 
the  air,  the  water  of  the  brook,  the  lightning  of  the 
cloud,  the  castings  of  the  worm,  the  plough  of  the  frost. 
Long  before  he  was  bom,  the  sun  of  ages  decomposed 
the  rocks,  mellowed  his  land,  soaked  it  with  light  and 
heat,  covered  it  with  vegetable  film,  then  with  forests, 
and  accumulated  the  sphagnum  whose  decays  made  the 
peat  of  his  meadow. 

Science  has  shown  the  great  circles  in  which  Nature 
works;  the  manner  in  which  marine  plants  balance  the 
marine  animals,  as  the  land  plants  supply  the  oxygen 
which  the  animals  consume,  and  the  animals  the  carbon 
which  the  plants  absorb.  These  activities  are  incessant. 
Nature  works  on  a  method  of  all  for  each  and  each  for 


(^ 


ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 


all.  Tlie  strain  that  is  made  on  one  point  bears  on  every 
arch  and  foundation  of  the  structure.  There  is  a  per- 
fect solidarity.  You  cannot  detach  an  atom  from  its 
holdings,  or  strip  off  from  it  the  electricity,  gravitation, 
chemic  affinity,  or  the  relation  to  light  and  heat,  and 
leave  the  atom  bare.  No,  it  brings  with  it  its  universal  ties. 

Nature,  like  a  cautious  testator,  ties  up  her  estate, 
so  as  not  to  bestow  it  all  on  one  generation,  but  has  a 
forelooking  tenderness  and  equal  regard  to  the  next  and 
tlie  next,  and  the  fourth,  and  the  fortieth  age. 

There  lie  the  inexhaustible  magazines.  The  eternal 
rocks,  as  we  call  them,  have  held  their  oxygen  or  lime 
undiminished,  entire  as  it  was.  No  particle  of  oxygen 
can  rust  or  wear,  but  has  the  same  energy  as  on  the  first 
morning.  The  good  rocks,  those  patient  waiters,  say 
to  him:  "We  have  the  sacred  power  as  we  received  it. 
We  have  not  failed  of  our  trust,  and  now — when  in  our 
inunense  day  the  hour  is  at  last  struck — take  the  gas  we 
have  hoarded ;  mingle  it  with  water ;  and  let  it  be  free 
to  grow  in  plants  and  animals,  and  obey  the  thought 
of  man." 

The  earth  works  for  him;  the  earth  is  a  machine 
which  yields  almost  gratuitous  service  to  every  applica- 
tion of  intellect.  Every  plant  is  a  manufacturer  of 
soil.  In  the  stomach  of  the  plant  development  begins. 
The  tree  can  draw  on  the  whole  air,  the  whole  earth,  on 
all  the  rolling  main.  The  plant  is  all  suction-pipe, — 
imbibing  from  the  ground  by  its  root,  from  the  air  by 
its  leaves,  with  all  its  might. 

The  air  works  for  him.  The  atmosphere,  a  sharp  sol- 
vent, drinks  the  essence  and  spirit  of  every  solid  on  the 
globe, — menstruum  which  melts  the  mountains  into  it. 


FARMING  7 

Air  is  matter  subdued  by  heat.  As  the  sea  is  the  grand 
receptacle  of  all  rivers,  so  the  air  is  the  receptacle  from 
which  all  things  spring,  and  into  which  they  all  return. 
The  invisible  and  creeping  air  takes  form  and  solid  mass. 
Our  senses  are  sceptics,  and  believe  only  the  impression 
of  the  moment,  and  do  not  believe  the  chemical  fact  that 
these  huge  mountain-chains  are  made  up  of  gases  and 
rolling  wind.  But  Nature  is  as  subtle  as  she  is  strong. 
She  turns  her  capital  day  by  day ;  deals  never  with 
dead,  but  ever  with  quick  subjects.  All  things  are  flow- 
ing, even  those  that  seem  immovable.  The  adamant  is 
always  passing  into  smoke.  The  plants  imbibe  the 
materials  which  they  want  from  the  air  and  the  ground. 
They  burn,  that  is,  exhale  and  decompose  their  own 
bodies  into  the  air  and  earth  again.  The  animal  burns, 
or  undergoes  the  like  perpetual  consumption.  The  earth 
burns, — the  mountains  burn  and  decompose,  slower,  but 
incessantly.  It  is  almost  inevitable  to  push  the  gener- 
alization up  into  higher  parts  of  nature,  rank  over  rank 
into  sentient  beings.  Nations  burn  with  internal  fire  of 
thought  and  affection,  which  wastes  while  it  works.  We 
shall  find  finer  combustion  and  finer  fuel.  Intellect  is  a 
fire:  rash  and  pitiless  it  melts  this  wonderful  bone-house 
which  is  called  man.  Genius  even,  as  it  is  the  greatest 
good,  is  the  greatest  harm.  Whilst  all  thus  burns, — the 
universe  in  a  blaze  kindled  from  the  torch  of  the  sun, — 
it  needs  a  perpetual  tempering,  a  phlegm,  a  sleep,  atmos- 
pheres of  azote,  deluges  of  water,  to  check  the  fury  of 
the  conflagration ;  a  hoarding  to  check  the  spending ;  a 
centripetence  equal  to  the  centrifugence ;  and  this  is 
invariably  supplied. 

The  railroad  dirt-cars  are  good  excavators ;  but  there 


8  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

is  no  porter  like  Gravitation,  who  will  bring  down  any 
weights  which  man  cannot  carry,  and  if  he  wants  aid, 
knows  where  to  find  his  fellow-laborers.  Water  works 
in  masses,  and  sets  its  irresistible  shoulder  to  your  mills 
or  your  ships,  or  transports  vast  boulders  of  rock  in 
its  iceberg  a  thousand  miles.  But  its  far  greater  power 
depends  on  its  talent  of  becoming  httle,  and  entering 
the  smallest  holes  and  pores.  By  this  agency,  carrying 
in  solution  elements  needful  to  every  plant,  the  vege- 
table world  exists. 

But  as  I  said,  we  must  not  paint  the  farmer  in  rose- 
color.  Whilst  these  grand  energies  have  wrought  for 
him,  and  made  his  task  possible,  he  is  habitually  engaged 
in  small  economies  and  is  taught  the  power  that  lurks  in 
petty  things.  Great  is  the  force  of  a  few  simple  arrange- 
ments :  for  instance,  the  powers  of  a  fence.  On  the 
prairie  you  wander  a  hundred  miles,  and  hardly  find  a 
stick  or  a  stone.  At  rare  intervals,  a  thin  oak  opening 
has  been  spared,  and  every  such  section  has  been  long 
occupied.  But  the  farmer  manages  to  procure  wood 
from  far,  puts  up  a  rail  fence,  and  at  once  the  seeds 
sprout  and  the  oaks  rise.  It  was  only  browsing  and 
fire  which  had  kept  them  down.  Plant  fruit-trees  by  the 
roadside  and  their  fruit  will  never  be  allowed  to  ripen. 
Draw  a  pine  fence  about  them  and  for  fifty  years  they 
m-ature  for  the  owner  their  delicate  fruit.  There  is  a 
great  deal  of  enchantment  in  a  chestnut  rail  or  picketed 
pine  boards. 

Nature  suggests  every  economical  expedient  some- 
where on  a  great  scale.  Set  out  a  pine-tree,  and  it  dies 
in  the  first  year,  or  lives  a  poor  spindle.  But  Nature 
drops  a  pine-cone  in  Mariposa,  and  it  lives  fifteen  cen- 


FARMING  9 

turies,  grows  three  or  four  hundred  feet  high,  and  thirty 
in  diameter, — grows  in  a  grove  of  giants,  like  a  colon- 
nade of  Thebes.  Ask  the  tree  how  it  was  done.  It  did 
not  grow  on  a  ridge  but  in  a  basin,  where  it  found  deep 
soil,  cold  enough  and  dry  enough  for  the  pine ;  defended 
itself  from  the  sun  by  growing  in  groves,  and  from  the 
wind  by  the  walls  of  the  mountain.  The  roots  that  shot 
deepest,  and  the  stems  of  happiest  exposure,  drew  the 
nourishment  from  the  rest,  until  the  less  thrifty  perished 
and  manured  the  soil  for  the  stronger,  and  the  mam- 
moth Sequoias  rose  to  their  enormous  proportions.  The 
traveller  who  saw  them  remembered  his  orchard  at  home, 
where  every  year,  in  the  destroying  wind,  his  forlorn 
trees  pined  like  suffering  virtue.  In  September  when 
the  pears  hang  heaviest,  and  are  taking  from  the  sun 
their  gay  colors,  comes  usually  a  gusty  day  which  shakes 
the  whole  garden,  and  throws  down  the  heaviest  fruit  in 
bruised  heaps.  The  planter  took  the  hint  of  the 
Sequoias,  built  a  high  wall,  or — ^better — surrounded  the 
orchard  with  a  nursery  of  birches  and  evergreens.  Thus 
he  had  the  mountain  basin  in  miniature ;  and  his  pears 
grew  to  the  size  of  melons,  and  the  vines  beneath  them 
ran  an  eighth  of  a  mile.  But  this  shelter  creates  a  new 
climate.  The  wall  that  keeps  off  the  strong  wind  keeps 
off  the  cold  wind.  The  high  wall  reflecting  the  heat 
back  on  the  soil  gives  that  acre  a  quadruple  share  of 
sunshine, 

Enclosing  in  the  garden  square 

A  dead   and   standing  pool  of  air, 

and  makes  a  little  Cuba  within  it,  whilst  all  without  is 
Labrador. 

The  chemist  comes  to  his  aid  every  year  by  following 


10  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

out  some  new  hint  drawn  from  Nature,  and  now  affirms 
that  this  dreary  space  occupied  by  the  fanner  is  need- 
less: he  will  concentrate  his  kitchen-garden  into  a  box 
of  one  or  two  rods  square,  will  take  the  roots'  into  his 
laboratory;  the  vines  and  stalks  and  stems  may  go 
sprawling  about  in  the  fields  outside,  he  will  attend  to 
the  roots  in  his  tub,  gorge  them  with  food  that  is  good 
for  them.  The  smaller  his  garden,  the  better  he  can 
feed  it,  and  the  larger  the  crop.  As  he  nursed  his 
Thanksgiving  turkeys  on  bread  and  milk,  so  he  will 
pamper  his  peaches  and  grapes  on  the  viands  they  like 
best.  If  they  have  an  appetite  for  potash,  or  salt,  or 
iron,  or  ground  bones,  or  even  now  and  then  for  a  dead 
hog,  he  will  indulge  them.  They  keep  the  secret  well, 
and  never  tell  on  your  table  whence  they  drew  their  sun- 
set complexion  or  their  delicate  flavors. 

See  what  the  farmer  accomplishes  by  a  cartload  of 
tiles:  he  alters  the  climate  by  letting  off  water  which 
kept  the  land  cold  through  constant  evaporation,  and 
allows  the  warm  rain  to  bring  down  into  the  roots  the 
temperature  of  the  air  and  of  the  surface-soil;  and  he 
deepens  the  soil,  since  the  discharge  of  this  standing 
water  allows  the  roots  of  his  plants  to  penetrate  below 
the  surface  of  the  subsoil,  and  accelerates  the  ripening 
of  the  crop.  The  town  of  Concord  is  one  of  the  oldest 
towns  in  this  country,  far  on  now  in  its  third  century. 
The  selectmen  have  once  in  every  five  years  perambu- 
lated the  boundaries,  and  yet,  in  this  very  year,  a  large 
quantity  of  land  has  been  discovered  and  added  to  the 
town  without  a  murmur  of  complaint  from  any  quarter. 
By  drainage  we  went  down  to  a  subsoil  we  did  not  know, 
and  have  found  there  is  a  Concord  under  old  Concord, 


FARMING  11 

which  we  are  now  getting  the  best  crops  from  ;  a  Middle- 
sex under  Middlesex;  and,  in  fine,  that  Massachusetts 
has  a  basement  story  more  valuable,  and  that  promises 
to  pay  a  better  rent  than  all  the  superstructure.  But 
these  tiles  have  acquired  by  association  a  new  interest. 
These  tiles  are  political  economists,  confuters  of  Mal- 
thus  and  Ricardo ;  they  are  so  many  young  Americans 
announcing  a  better  era, — more  bread.  They  drain  the 
land,  make  it  sweet  and  friable ;  have  made  EngHsh  Chat 
Moss  a  garden,  and  will  now  do  as  much  for  the  Dismal 
Swamp.  But  beyond  this  benefit,  they  are  the  text  of 
better  opinions  and  better  auguries  for  mankind. 

There  has  been  a  nightmare,  bred  in  England,  of  indi- 
gestion and  spleen  among  landlords  and  loomlords, 
namely,  the  dogma  that  men  breed  too  fast  for  the 
powers  of  the  soil;  that  men  multiply  in  a  geometrical 
ratio,  whilst  corn  only  in  an  arithmetical;  and  hence 
that,  the  more  prosperous  we  are,  the  faster  we  approach 
these  frightful  limits :  nay,  the  plight  of  every  new  gen- 
eration is  worse  than  of  the  foregoing,  because  the  first 
comers  take  up  the  best  lands ;  the  next,  the  second  best ; 
and  each  succeeding  wave  of  population  is  driven  to 
poorer,  so  that  the  land  is  ever  yielding  less  returns  to 
enlarging  hosts  of  eaters.  Henry  Carey  of  Philadelphia 
replied :  "Not  so,  Mr.  Malthus,  but  just  the  opposite  of 
so  is  the  fact." 

The  first  planter,  the  savage,  without  helpers,  without 
tools,  looking  chiefly  to  safety  from  his  enemy, — man  or 
beast, — stakes  poor  land.  The  better  lands  are  loaded 
with  timber,  which  he  cannot  clear ;  they  need  drainage, 
which  he  cannot  attempt.  He  cannot  plough,  or  fell 
trees,  or  drain  the  rich  swamp.    He  is  a  poor  creature; 


12  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

he  scratches  with  a  sharp  stick,  lives  in  a  cave  or  a 
hutch,  has  no  road  but  the  trail  of  the  moose  or  bear ; 
he  lives  on  their  flesh  when  he  can  kill  one,  on  roots 
and  fruits  when  he  cannot.  He  falls,  and  is  lame;  he 
coughs,  he  has  a  stitch  in  his  side,  he  has  a  fever  and 
chills :  when  he  is  hungry,  he  cannot  always  kill  and  eat 
a  bear; — chances  of  war, — sometimes  the  bear  eats  him. 
'Tis  long  before  he  digs  or  plants  at  all,  and  then  only 
a  patch.  Later  he  learns  that  his  planting  is  better 
than  hunting;  that  the  earth  works  faster  for  him  than 
he  can  work  for  himself, — works  for  him  when  he  is 
asleep,  when  it  rains,  when  heat  overcomes  him.  The 
sunstroke  which  knocks  him  down  brings  his  corn  up. 
As  his  family  thrive,  and  other  planters  come  up  around 
him,  he  begins  to  fell  trees,  and  clear  good  land;  and 
when,  by  and  by,  there  is  more  skill,  and  tools  and  roads, 
the  new  generations  are  strong  enough  to  open  the  low- 
lands, where  the  wash  of  mountains  has  accumulated  the 
best  soil,  which  yield  a  hundredfold  the  former  crops. 
The  last  lands  are  the  best  lands.  It  needs  science  and 
great  numbers  to  cultivate  the  best  lands,  and  in  the 
best  manner.  Thus  true  political  economy  is  not  mean 
but  liberal,  and  on  the  pattern  of  the  sun  and  sk3\ 
Population  increases  in  the  ratio  of  morality ;  credit 
exists  in  the  ratio  of  morality. 

Meantime  we  cannot  enumerate  the  incidents  and 
agents  of  the  farm  without  reverting  to  their  influence 
on  the  farmer.  He  carries  out  this  cumulative  prepara- 
tion of  means  to  their  last  effect.  This  crust  of  soil 
which  ages  have  refined  he  refines  again  for  the  feeding 
of  a  civil  and  instructed  people.  The  great  elements 
with  which  he   deals   cannot  leave   him   unaffected,   or 


FARMING  13 

unconscious  of  his  ministry ;  but  their  influence  some- 
what resembles  that  which  the  same  Nature  has  on  the 
child — of  subduing  and  silencing  him.  We  see  the 
farmer  with  pleasure  and  respect,  when  we  think  what 
powers  and  utilities  are  so  meekly  worn.  He  knows 
every  secret  of  labor:  he  changes  the  face  of  the  land- 
scape. Put  him  on  a  new  planet,  and  he  would  know 
where  to  begin ;  yet  there  is  no  arrogance  in  his  bearing, 
but  a  perfect  gentleness.  The  farmer  stands  well  on 
the  world.  Plain  in  manners  as  in  dress,  he  would  not 
shine  in  palaces ;  he  is  absolutely  unknown  and  inadmis- 
sible therein;  living  or  dying,  he  never  shall  be  heard 
of  in  them ;  yet  the  drawing-room  heroes  put  down  beside 
him  would  shrivel  in  his  presence — he  solid  and  unex- 
pressive,  they  expressed  to  gold-leaf.  But  he  stands 
well  on  the  world, — as  Adam  did,  as  an  Indian  does,  as 
Homer's  heroes,  Agamemnon  or  Achilles,  do.  He  is  a 
person  whom  a  poet  of  any  clime — Milton,  Firdusi,  or 
Cervantes — .would  appreciate  as  being  really  a  piece  of 
the  old  Nature,  comparable  to  sun  and  moon,  rainbow 
and  flood:  because  he  is,  as  all  natural  persons  are, 
representatives  of  Nature  as  much  as  these. 

That  uncorrupted  behavior  which  we  admire  in  ani- 
mals and  in  young  children  belongs  to  him,  to  the  hunter, 
the  sailor, — the  man  who  lives  in  the  presence  of  Nature. 
Cities  force  growth,  and  make  men  talkative  and  enter- 
taining, but  they  make  them  artificial.  What  possesses 
interest  for  us  is  the  riuturel  of  each,  his  constitutional 
excellence.  This  is  forever  a  surprise,  engaging  and 
lovely ;  we  cannot  be  satiated  with  knowing  it,  and  about 
it ;  and  it  is  this  which  the  conversation  with  Nature 
cherishes  and  guards. 


II 

THE  HOLY  EARTH* 

Liberty  H.  Bailey 

first,  the  statement 

So  BOUNTIFUL  hath  been  the  earth  and  so  securely 
have  we  drawn  from  it  our  substance,  that  we  have  taken 
it  all  for  granted  as  if  it  were  only  a  gift,  and  with 
little  care  or  conscious  thought  of  the  consequences  of 
our  use  of  it ;  nor  have  we  very  much  considered  the 
essential  relation  that  we  bear  to  it  as  Hving  parts  in 
the  vast  creation. 

It  is  good  to  think  of  ourselves — of  this  teeming,  tense, 
and  aspiring  human  race — as  a  helpful  and  contributing 
part  in  the  plan  of  a  cosmos,  and  as  participators  in 
some  far-reaching  destiny.  The  idea  of  responsibility 
is  much  asserted  of  late,  but  we  relate  it  mostly  to  the 
attitude  of  persons  in  the  realm  of  conventional  con- 
duct, which  we  have  come  to  regard  as  very  exclusively 
the  realm  of  morals ;  and  we  have  established  certain 
formalities  that  satisfy  the  conscience.  But  there  is 
some  deeper  relation  than  all  of  this,  which  we  must 
recognize  and  the  consequences  of  which  we  must  prac- 
tise. There  is  a  directer  and  more  personal  obligation 
than  that  which  expends  itself  in  loyalty  to  the  manifold 
organizations   and  social  requirements   of  the  present 

*  From  "The  Holy  Earth,"  by  permission  of  the   author. 

14 


THE  HOLY  EARTH  15 

day.  There  is  a  more  fundamental  cooperation  in  the 
scheme  of  things  than  that  which  deals  with  the  pro- 
prieties or  which  centers  about  the  selfishness  too  often 
expressed  in  the  salvation  of  one's  soul. 

We  can  be  only  onlookers  on  that  part  of  the  cosmos 
that  we  call  the  far  heavens,  but  it  is  possible  to  cooper- 
ate in  the  processes  on  the  surface  of  the  sphere.  This 
cooperation  may  be  conscious  and  definite,  and  also  use- 
ful to  the  earth;  that  is,  it  may  be  real.  What  means 
this  contact  with  our  natural  situation,  this  relation- 
ship to  the  earth  to  which  we  are  born,  and  what  signify 
this  new  exploration  and  conquest  of  the  planet  and 
these  accumulating  prophecies  of  science?  Does  the 
mothership  of  the  earth  have  any  real  meaning  to  us? 

All  this  does  not  imply  a  relation  only  with  material 
and  physical  things,  nor  any  effort  to  substitute  a 
nature  religion.  Our  relation  with  the  planet  must  be 
raised  into  the  realm  of  spirit;  we  cannot  be  fully  use- 
ful otherwise.  We  must  find  a  way  to  maintain  the 
emotions  in  the  abounding  commercial  civilization. 
There  are  two  kinds  of  materials, — those  of  the  native 
earth  and  the  idols  of  one's  hands.  The  latter  are  much 
in  evidence  in  modem  life,  with  the  conquests  of  engi- 
neering, mechanics,  architecture,  and  all  the  rest.  We 
visualize  them  everywhere,  and  particularly  in  the  great 
centers  of  population.  The  tendency  is  to  be  removed 
farther  and  farther  from  the  everlasting  backgrounds. 
Our  religion  is  detached. 

We  come  out  of  the  earth  and  we  have  a  right  to  the 
use  of  the  materials;  and  there  is  no  danger  of  crass 
materialism  if  we  recognize  the  original  materials  as 
divine  and  if  we  understand  our  proper  relation  to  the 


/ 


16  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

creation,  for  then  will  gross  selfishness  in  the  use  of 
them  be  removed. 

This  will  necessarily  mean  a  better  conception  of 
property  and  of  one's  obligation  in  the  use  of  it.  We 
shall  conceive  of  the  earth,  which  is  the  common 
habitation,  as  inviolable.  One  does  not  act  rightly 
toward  one's  fellows  if  one  does  not  know  how  to  act 
rightly  toward  the  earth. 

Nor  does  this  close  regard  for  the  mother  earth  imply 
any  loss  of  mysticism  or  of  exaltation:  quite  the  con- 
trary. Science  but  increases  the  mystery  of  the  un- 
known and  enlarges  the  boundaries  of  the  spiritual 
vision.  To  feel  that  one  is  a  useful  and  cooperat- 
ing part  in  nature  is  to  give  one  kinship,  and  to  open 
the  mind  to  the  great  resources  and  the  high 
enthusiasms. 

Here  arise  the  fundamental  common  relations.  Here 
arise  also  the  great  emotions  and  conceptions  of  sub- 
limity and  grandeur,  of  majesty  and  awe,  the  uplift  of 
vast  desires, — when  one  contemplates  the  earth  and  the 
universe  and  desires  to  take  them  into  the  soul  and  to 
express  oneself  in  their  terms ;  and  here  also  the  respon- 
sible practices  of  life  take  root. 

So  much  are  we  now  involved  in  problems  of  human 
groups,  so  persistent  are  the  portrayals  of  our  social 
afflictions,  and  so  well  do  we  magnify  our  woes  by  insist- 
ing on  them,  so  much  in  sheer  weariness  do  we  provide 
antidotes  to  soothe  our  feelings  and  to  cause  us  to  for- 
get by  means  of  many  empty  diversions,  that  we  may 
neglect  to  express  ourselves  in  simple,  free,  personal  joy 
and  to  separate  the  obligation  of  the  individual  from 
the  irresponsibilities  of  the  mass. 


THE  HOLY  EARTH  17 

IN  THE  BEGINNING 

It  suits  my  purpose  to  quote  the  first  sentence  in  the 
Hebrew  Scripture:  In  the  beginning  God  created  the 
heaven  and  the  earth. 

This  is  a  statement  of  tremendous  reach,  introducinfr 
the  cosmos ;  for  it  sets  forth  in  the  fewest  words  the 
elemental  fact  that  the  formation  of  the  created  earth 
lies  above  and  before  man,  and  that  therefore  it  is  not 
man's  but  God's.  Man  finds  himself  upon  it,  with  many 
other  creatures,  all  parts  in  some  system  which,  since  it 
is  beyond  man  and  superior  to  him,  is  divine. 

Yet  the  planet  was  not  at  once  complete  when  life 
had  appeared  upon  it.  The  whirling  earth  goes  through 
many  vicissitudes ;  the  conditions  on  its  fruitful  surface 
are  ever-changing;  and  the  forms  of  life  must  meet  the 
new  conditions :  so  does  the  creation  continue,  and  every 
day  sees  the  genesis  in  process.  All  life  contends,  some- 
times ferociously  but  more  often  bloodlcssly  and  benignly, 
and  the  contention  results  in  momentary  equilibrium,  one 
set  of  contestants  balancing  another ;  but  every  change 
in  the  outward  conditions  destroys  the  equation  and  a 
new  status  results.  Of  all  the  disturbing  living  factoro, 
man  is  the  greatest.  He  sets  mighty  changes  going, 
destroying  forests,  upturning  the  sleeping  prairies, 
flooding  the  deserts,  deflecting  the  courses  of  the  rivers, 
building  great  cities.  He  operates  consciously  and  in- 
creasingly with  plan  aforethought;  and  therefore  he 
carries  heavy  responsibility. 

This  responsibility  is  recognized  in  the  Hebrew  Scrip- 
ture, from  which  I  have  quoted;  and  I  quote  it  again 
because  I  know  of  no  other  Scripture  that  states  it  so 
well.    Man  is  given  the  image  of  the  Creator,  even  when 


18  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

formed  from  the  dust  of  the  earth,  so  complete  Is  his 
power  and  so  real  his  dominion :  And  God  blessed  them : 
and  God  said  unto  them,  Be  fruitful,  and  multiply,  and 
replenish  the  earth,  and  subdue  it;  and  have  dominion 
over  the  fish  of  the  sea,  and  over  the  fowl  of  the  air, 
and  over  every  living  thing  that  moveth  upon  the  earth. 
One  cannot  receive  all  these  privileges  without  bear- 
ing the  obligation  to  react  and  to  partake,  to  keep,  to 
cherish,  and  to  cooperate.  We  have  assumed  that  there 
is  no  obligation  to  an  inanimate  thing,  as  we  consider 
the  earth  to  be:  but  man  should  respect  the  conditions 
in  which  he  is  placed ;  the  earth  yields  the  living  crea- 
ture; man  Is  a  living  creature;  science  constantly  nar- 
rows the  gulf  between  the  animate  and  the  inanimate, 
between  the  organized  and  the  inorganized;  evolution 
derives  the  creatures  from  the  earth ;  the  creation  is  one 
creation.    I  must  accept  all  or  reject  all. 

THE    EARTH   IS    GOOD 

It  is  good  to  live.  We  talk  of  death  and  of  llfeless- 
ness,  but  we  know  only  of  life.  Even  our  prophecies 
of  death  are  prophecies  of  more  life.  We  know  no  better 
world:  whatever  else  there  may  be  Is  of  things  hoped 
for,  not  of  things  seen.  The  objects  are  here,  not  hidden 
nor  far  to  seek :  And  God  saw  everything  that  He  had 
made,  and,  behold.  It  was  very  good. 

These  good  things  are  the  present  things  and  the 
living  things.  The  account  is  silent  on  the  things  that 
were  not  created,  the  chaos,  the  darkness,  the  abyss. 
Plato,  In  the  "Republic,"  reasoned  that  the  works  of  the 
Creator  must  be  good  because  the  Creator  is  good.  This 
goodness  is  In  the  essence  of  things ;  and  we  sadly  need 


THE  HOLY  EARTH  19 

to  make  it  a  part  in  our  philosophy  of  life.  The  earth 
is  the  scene  of  our  life,  and  probably  the  very  source 
of  it.  The  heaven,  so  far  as  human  beings  know,  is  the 
source  only  of  death;  in  fact,  we  have  peopled  it 
with  the  dead.  We  have  built  our  philosophy  on  the 
dead. 

We  seem  to  have  overlooked  the  goodness  of  the  earth 
in  the  establishing  of  our  affairs,  and  even  in  our  philos- 
ophies. It  is  reserved  as  a  theme  for  preachers  and  for 
poets.  And  yet,  the  goodness  of  the  planet  is  the  basic 
fact  in  our  existence. 

I  am  not  speaking  of  good  in  an  abstract  way,  in 
the  sense  in  which  some  of  us  suppose  the  Creator  to 
have  expressed  Himself  as  pleased  or  satisfied  with  His 
work.  The  earth  is  good  in  itself,  and  its  products  are 
good  in  themselves.  The  earth  sustains  all  things.  It 
satisfies.  It  matters  not  whether  this  satisfaction  is  the 
result  of  adaptation  in  the  process  of  evolution;  the 
fact  remains  that  the  creation  is  good. 

To  the  common  man  the  earth  propounds  no  system 
of  philosophy  or  of  theology.  The  man  makes  his  own 
personal  contact,  deals  with  the  facts  as  they  are  or  as 
he  conceives  them  to  be,  and  is  not  swept  into  any  sys- 
tem. He  has  no  right  to  assume  a  bad  or  evil  earth, 
although  it  is  difficult  to  cast  off  the  hindrance  of  cen- 
turies of  teaching.  When  he  is  properly  educated  he 
will  get  a  new  resource  from  his  relationships. 

It  may  be  difficult  to  demonstrate  this  goodness.  In 
the  nature  of  things  we  must  assume  it,  although  we 
know  that  we  could  not  subsist  on  a  sphere  of  the  oppo- 
site qualities.  The  important  consideration  is  that  we 
appreciate  it,  and  this  not  in  any  sentimental  and  im- 


20  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

personal  way.  To  every  bird  the  air  is  good;  and  a 
man  knows  it  is  good  if  he  is  worth  being  a  man.  To 
every  fish  the  water  is  good.  To  every  beast  its  food  is 
good,  and  its  time  of  sleep  is  good.  The  creatures 
experience  that  life  is  good.  Every  man  in  his  heart 
knows  that  there  is  goodness  and  wholeness  in  the  rain, 
in  the  wind,  the  soil,  the  sea,  the  glory  of  sunrise,  in  the 
trees,  and  in  the  sustenance  that  we  derive  from  the 
planet.  When  we  grasp  the  significance  of  this  situa- 
tion, we  shall  forever  supplant  the  religion  of  fear  with 
a  religion  of  consent. 

We  are  so  accustomed  to  these  essentials — to  the  rain, 
the  wind,  the  soil,  the  sea,  the  sunrise,  the  trees,  the 
sustenance — that  we  may  not  include  them  in  the  cate- 
gories of  the  good  things,  and  we  endeavor  to  satisfy 
ourselves  with  many  small  and  trivial  and  exotic  grati- 
fications ;  and  when  these  gratifications  fail  or  pall,  we 
find  ourselves  helpless  and  resourceless.  The  joy  of 
sound  sleep,  the  relish  of  a  sufficient  meal  of  plain  and 
wholesome  food,  the  desire  to  do  a  good  day's  work  and 
the  recompense  when  at  night  we  are  tired  from  the 
doing  of  it,  the  exhilaration  of  fresh  air,  the  exercise  of 
the  natural  powers,  the  mastery  of  a  situation  or  a  prob- 
lem— these  and  many  others  like  them  are  fundamental 
satisfactions,  beyond  all  pampering  and  all  toys,  and 
they  are  of  the  essence  of  goodness.  I  think  we  should 
teach  all  children  how  good  are  the  common  necessities, 
and  how  very  good  are  the  things  that  are  made  in  the 
beginning. 

IT    IS    KINDLY 

We  hear  much  about  man  being  at  the  mercy  of  nature, 
and  the  literalist  will  contend  that  there  can  be  do  holy 


THE  HOLY  EARTH  21 

relation  under  such  conditions.  But  so  is  man  at  the 
mercy  of  God. 

It  is  a  blasphemous  practice  that  speaks  of  the  hos- 
tility of  the  earth,  as  if  the  earth  were  full  of  menaces 
and  cataclysms.  The  old  fear  of  nature,  that  peopled 
the  earth  and  skj^  with  imps  and  demons,  and  that  gave 
a  future  state  to  Satan,  yet  possesses  the  minds  of  men, 
only  that  we  may  have  ceased  to  personify  and  to  demon- 
ize  our  fears,  although  we  still  persistently  contrast 
what  we  call  the  evil  and  the  good.  Still  do  we  attempt 
to  propitiate  and  appease  the  adversaries.  Still  do 
we  carry  the  ban  of  the  early  philosophy  that  assumed 
materials  and  "the  flesh"  to  be  evil,  and  that  found  a 
way  of  escape  only  in  renunciation  and  asceticism. 

Nature  cannot  be  antagonistic  to  man,  seeing  that 
man  is  a  product  of  nature.  We  should  find  vast  joy 
in  the  fellowship,  something  like  the  joy  of  Pan.  We 
should  feel  the  relief  when  we  no  longer  apologize  for 
the  Creator  because  of  the  things  that  are  made. 

It  is  true  that  there  are  devastations  of  flood  and  fire 
and  frost,  scourge  of  disease,  and  appalling  convulsions 
of  earthquake  and  eruption.  But  man  prospers;  and 
we  know  that  the  catastrophes  are  greatly  fewer  than 
the  accepted  bounties.  We  have  no  choice  but  to 
abide. 

No  growth  comes  from  hostility.  It  would  undoubt- 
edly be  a  poor  human  race  if  all  the  pathway  had  been 
plain  and  easy. 

The  contest  with  nature  is  wholesome,  particularly 
when  pursued  in  sympathy  and  for  mastery.  It  is 
worthy  a  being  created  in  God's  image.  The  earth  is 
perhaps  a  stem  earth,  but  it  is  a  kindly  earth. 


22  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

Most  of  our  difficulty  with  the  earth  lies  in  the  effort 
to  do  what  perhaps  ought  not  to  be  done.  Not  even 
all  the  land  is  fit  to  be  farmed.  A  good  part  of  agricul- 
ture is  to  learn  how  to  adapt  one's  work  to  nature,  to 
fit  the  crop-scheme  to  the  climate  and  to  the  soil  and 
the  facilities.  To  live  in  right  relation  with  his  natural 
conditions  is  one  of  the  first  lessons  that  a  wise  farmer 
or  any  other  wise  man  learns.  We  are  at  pains  to  stress 
the  importance  of  conduct;  very  well:  conduct  toward 
the  earth  is  an  essential  part  of  it. 

Nor  need  we  be  afraid  of  any  fact  that  makes  one 
fact  more  or  less  in  the  sum  of  contracts  between  the 
earth  and  the  earth-bom  children.  All  "higher  criti- 
cism" adds  to  the  faith  rather  than  subtracts  from  it, 
and  strengthens  the  bond  between.  The  earth  and  its 
products  are  very  real. 

Our  outlook  has  been  drawn  very  largely  from  the 
.abstract.  Not  being  yet  prepared  to  understand  the 
conditions  of  nature,  man  considered  the  earth  to  be 
inhospitable,  and  he  looked  to  the  supernatural  for 
relief;  and  relief  was  heaven.  Our  pictures  of  heaven 
are  of  the  opposites  of  daily  experience — of  release, 
of  peace,  of  joy  uninterrupted.  The  hunting-grounds 
are  happy  and  the  satisfaction  has  no  end.  The  habit 
of  thought  has  been  set  by  this  conception,  and  it  colors 
our  dealings  with  the  human  questions  and  to  much 
extent  it  controls  our  practice. 

But  we  begin  to  understand  that  the  best  dealing 
with  problems  on  earth  is  to  found  it  on  the  facts  of 
earth. 

This  is  the  contribution  of  natural  science,  however 
abstract,  to  human  welfare.  Heaven  is  to  be  a  real  con- 


THE  HOLY  EARTH  23 

sequence  of  life  on  earth ;  and  we  do  not  lessen  the  hope 
of  heaven  by  increasing  our  affection  for  the  earth,  but 
rather  do  we  strengthen  it.  Men  now  forget  the  old 
images  of  heaven,  that  they  are  mere  sojourners  and 
wanderers  lingering  for  deliverance,  pilgrims  in  a 
strange  land.  Waiting  for  this  rescue,  with  posture  and 
formula  and  phrase,  we  have  overlooked  the  essential 
goodness  and  quickness  of  the  earth  and  the  immanence 
of  God. 

This  feeling  that  we  are  pilgrims  in  a  vale  of  tears 
has  been  enhanced  by  the  widespread  belief  in  the  sud- 
den ending  of  the  world,  by  collision  or  some  other 
impending  disaster,  and  in  the  common  apprehension  of 
doom ;  and  lately  by  speculations  as  to  the  aridation 
and  death  of  the  planet,  to  which  all  of  us  have  given 
more  or  less  credence.  But  most  of  these  notions  are 
now  considered  to  be  fantastic,  and  we  arc  increasingly 
confident  that  the  earth  is  not  growing  old  in  a  human 
sense,  that  its  atmosphere  and  its  water  are  held  by 
the  attraction  of  its  mass,  and  that  the  sphere  is  at  all 
events  so  permanent  as  to  make  little  difference  in  our 
philosophy  and  no  difference  in  our  good  behavior. 

I  am  again  impressed  with  the  first  record  in  Genesis 
in  which  some  mighty  prophet-poet  began  his  account 
with  the  creation  of  the  physical  universe. 

So  do  we  forget  the  old-time  importance  given  to 
mere  personal  salvation,  which  was  permission  to  live 
in  heaven,  and  we  think  more  of  our  present  situation, 
which  is  the  situation  of  obligation  and  of  service ;  and 
he  who  loses  his  life  shall  save  it. 

We  begin  to  foresee  the  vast  religion  of  a  better  social 
order. 


24  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTUHE 

THE   EARTH   IS    HOLY 

Verily,  then,  the  earth  is  divine,  because  man  did  not 
make  it.  We  are  here,  part  in  the  creation.  We  cannot 
escape.  We  are  under  obligation  to  take  part  and  to 
do  our  best,  living  with  each  other  and  with  all  the 
creatures.  We  may  not  know  the  full  plan,  but  that 
does  not  alter  the  relation.  When  once  we  set  our- 
selves to  the  pleasure  of  our  dominion,  reverently  and 
hopefully,  and  assume  all  its  responsibilities,  we  shall 
have  a  new  hold  on  life. 

We  shall  put  our  dominion  into  the  realm  of  morals. 
It  is  now  in  the  realm  of  trade.  This  will  be  very  per- 
sonal morals,  but  it  will  also  be  national  and  racial 
morals.  More  iniquity  follows  the  improper  and  greedy 
division  of  the  resources  and  privileges  of  the  earth 
than  any  other  form  of  sinfulness. 

If  God  created  the  earth,  so  is  the  earth  hallowed ;  and 
if  it  is  hallowed,  so  must  we  deal  with  it  devotedly  and 
with  care  that  we  do  not  despoil  it,  and  mindful  of  our 
relations  to  all  beings  that  live  on  it.  We  are  to  con- 
sider it  religiously:  Put  off  thy  shoes  from  off  thy 
feet,  for  the  place  whereon  thou  standest  is  holy  ground. 

The  sacredness  to  us  of  the  earth  is  intrinsic  and 
inherent.  It  lies  in  our  necessary  relationship  and  in 
the  duty  imposed  upon  us  to  have  dominion,  and  to 
exercise  ourselves  even  against  our  own  interests.  We 
may  not  waste  that  which  is  not  ours.  To  live  in  sin- 
cere relations  with  the  company  of  created  things  and 
with  conscious  regard  for  the  support  of  all  men  now 
and  yet  to  come,  must  be  of  the  essence  of  righteous- 
ness. 

This  is  a  larger  and  more  original  relation  than  the 


THE  HOLY  EARTH  25 

modem  attitude  of  appreciation  and  admiration  of 
nature.  In  the  days  of  the  patriarchs  and  prophets, 
nature  and  man  shared  in  the  condemnation  and  like- 
wise in  the  redemption.  The  ground  was  cursed  for 
Adam's  sin.  Paul  wrote  that  the  whole  creation 
gtoaneth  and  travaileth  in  pain,  and  that  it  waiteth  for 
the  revealing.  Isaiah  proclaimed  the  redemption  of  the 
wilderness  and  the  solitary  place  with  the  redemption  of 
man,  when  they  shall  rejoice  and  blossom  as  the  rose, 
and  when  the  glowing  sand  shall  become  a  pool  and  the 
thirsty  ground  springs  of  water. 

The  usual  objects  have  their  moral  significance.  An 
oak  tree  is  to  us  a  moral  object  because  it  lives  its  life 
regularly  and  fulfils  its  destiny.  In  the  wind  and  in  the 
stars,  in  forest  and  by  the  shore,  there  is  spiritual 
refreshment:  And  the  spirit  of  God  moved  upon  the 
face  of  the  waters. 

I  do  not  mean  all  this,  for  our  modem  world,  in  any 
vague  or  abstract  way.  If  the  earth  is  holy,  then  the 
things  that  grow  out  of  the  earth  are  also  holy.  They 
do  not  belong  to  man  to  do  with  them  as  he  will. 
Dominion  does  not  carry  personal  ownership.  There 
are  many  generations  of  folk  yet  to  come  after  us,  who 
will  have  equal  right  with  us  to  the  products  of  the 
globe.  It  would  seem  that  a  divine  obligation  rests  on 
every  soul.  Are  we  to;  make  righteous  use  of  the  vast 
accumulation  of  knowledge  of  the  planet?  If  so,  we 
must  have  a  new  formulation.  The  partition  of  the 
earth  among  the  millions  who  live  on  it  is  necessarily 
a  question  of  morals ;  and  a  society  that  is  founded  on 
an  unmoral  partition  and  use  cannot  itself  be  righteous 
and  whole. 


Ill 

THE  LOVE  OF  NATURE  * 
Mrs.  Schuyler  Van  Rensselaer 

All  human  beings  draw  pleasure  from  Nature  in  an 
instinctive  way.  They  enjoy  fresh  air,  sunshine,  and 
open  outlooks ;  they  prefer  a  blue  sky  to  a  gray  one,  and 
will  confess  that  a  green  landscape  is  pleasanter  to  the 
eye  than  grimy  pavements,  even  though  for  other 
reasons  they  may  prefer  to  live  in  town. 

Such  likings  as  these  prove  no  love  of  Nature ;  they 
are  almost  purely  physical ;  sentiment  has  little  more  to 
do  with  them  than  with  the  pleasure  of  an  animal  bask- 
ing in  the  sun.  But  the  majority  of  people,  even  among 
the  uncultivated  classes,  have  a  deeper  feeling  for 
Nature  than  this,  and  appreciate  something  of  its 
beauty.  Stupid  and  brutalized  indeed  is  the  man  or 
woman  who  does  not  notice  a  brilliant  bed  of  flowers,  or 
would  not  be  impressed  by  the  sight  of  a  great  moun- 
tain-chain. On  Sundays  our  parks  are  crowded  with 
very  poor  people  who  spread  through  every  quiet  walk 
and  shadowy  glade,  and  like  nothing  so  well  as  to  lie  or 
saunter  on  the  grass  ;  and  although  much  of  their  pleas- 
ure is  simply  physical,  anyone  who  has  sympathetically 
mingled  with  them  knows  that  part  of  it  is  of  finer 
quality.  The  beauty  of  the  landscape  speaks  to  even 
the  dullest  eye,  and  appeals   through   it  to  the  most 

♦From  "Art  Out  of  Doors,"  by  Mrs.  Schuyler  Van  Rensselaar.  Copy- 
right,  1893,  by  Charles  Scribner's  Sons.     By  permission  of  the  publishers. 

26 


THE  LOVE  OF  NATURE  27 

sluggish  imagination.  The  roughest  cockney  admires 
the  beauty  of  the  shores  of  the  Hudson  when  he  sees 
them  on  some  summer  excursion,  and  is  impressed  by  the 
splendor  of  the  sea  when  for  the  first  time  he  stands  on 
a  shore  where  its  waves  are  breaking. 

This  instinctive  admiration  for  the  charms  of  the 
natural  world  is  what  many  people  understand  by  the 
love  of  Nature.  But  it  is  not,  in  any  true  sense,  the  love 
of  Nature.  It  is  merely  a  love  for  natural  things  which 
are  beautiful,  of  course,  but  which  are  also  unfamiliar 
and  therefore  striking.  Let  the  dweller  in  tenement- 
houses  inhabit  a  lodge  in  Central  Park  for  a  while,  and 
he  would  probably  seek  his  Sunday  entertainment  in  a 
down-town  street.  Let  him  work  on  a  North  River 
schooner,  and  he  would  quickly  forget  to  notice  the 
beauty  of  the  shores. 

And  this  same  attitude  toward  Nature  may  be 
observed  in  persons  of  much  wider  cultivation.  To 
them  also  familiar  natural  things  soon  grow  uninterest- 
ing. The  artisans  who  crowd  our  Park  on  Sunday 
enjoy  its  beauty  more  than  do  most  of  the  wealthier 
folk  who  drive  there  every  day.  It  is  curious  to  notice 
how  few  of  these  ever  seem  to  look  at  anything  but  the 
people  in  the  other  carriages,  and  how  seldom  they  turn 
from  the  fashionable  East  Drive  into  the  much  more 
beautiful  West  Drive.  And  it  is  still  more  curious  to 
find  that  scores  of  them  who  have  made  pilgrimages  in 
search  af  natural  beauty  from  the  Nile  to  the  Sierras 
and  from  the  St,  Lawrence  to  Mexico,  have  never  left 
their  carriages  to  see  what  the  pathways  in  their  own 
park  might  reveal.  The  Ramble  is  as  unknown  to  them 
as  though  it  lay  in  China,  and  they  exclaim  in  surprise 


28  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

if  you  tell  them  they  might  travel  a  thousand  miles  and 
see  nothing  prettier. 

People  of  this  kind,  I  say,  do  not  care  about  Nature ; 
at  most  they  care  for  those  conspicuous  natural  effects 
which  they  call  scenery.  Scenery  is  not  the  whole  of 
natural  beauty ;  it  is  only  one  manifestation  of  it ;  and  a 
person  who  delights  in  a  magnificent  view  but  finds  all 
flat  regions  hopelessly  tiresome,  or  who  feels  the 
grandeur  of  a  rocky  coast  but  not  the  loveliness  of  a 
green-fringed,  quiet  shore,  is  in  a  rudimentary  stage  of 
development.  His  attitude  is  like  that  of  one  who  should 
profess  to  love  flowers  but,  while  admiring  a  rose,  should 
despise  a  forget-me-not.  The  true  lover  of  Nature  is 
he  who  gives  interested  attention  to  all  natural  effects 
and  forms,  and  finds  much  beauty  where  the  average  eye 
finds  none. 

Of  course  there  are  grades  and  degrees  of  natural 
beauty,  and  for  each  the  true  lover  will  have  a  cor- 
responding degree  of  admiration.  He  will  not  call  a 
Belgian  plain  as  beautiful  as  the  valley  of  the  Rhone,  or 
declare  that  a  nettle  has  the  charm  of  a  branch  of  apple- 
blossoms.  But  there  are  few  plants  which  have  no 
beauty  of  any  kind;  and  there  are  few  earthly  spots, 
where  man's  hand  has  not  obliterated  Nature's  inten- 
tions, so  devoid  of  attraction  that  the  sensitive  eye  and 
mind  cannot  en j  oy  them  keenly. 

Admiration,  says  a  French  writer  on  art,  "is  the 
active,  jsesthetic  form  of  curiosity."  And  this  means 
that  he  who  really  admires  the  works  of  God  will  be 
lovingly  curious  about  the  hyssop  on  the  wall  as  well  as 
about  the  cedar  of  Lebanon,  and  will  see  more  to  please 
him  in  a  rough  bit  of  pasture-land  than  the  average 


THE  LOVE  OF  NATURE  29 

person  sees  in  a  whole  fertile  valley.  Who  can  love 
Nature  better  than  the  landscape-painter,  spending  his 
whole  life  in  the  effort  to  transfer  her  features  to  his 
canvas?  But  no  one  is  less  in  need  than  the  landscape- 
painter  of  what  is  called  scenery.  It  is  not  he  who 
greatly  prefers  the  canon  of  the  Yellowstone  to  the 
banks  of  the  little  river  near  at  hand.  When  he  is 
brought  face  to  face  with  scenic  grandeurs  he  appreci- 
ates them  more  keenly  than  anyone  else,  but  he  gladly 
comes  back  to  his  quiet  plains,  his  placid  pools,  his  little 
forest  glades.  Nor  is  it  merely  because  these  things  are 
better  fitted  for  painting  than  grander  things.  Any 
little  corner  of  the  world  is  enough  for  him,  as  a  thing 
to  enjoy  no  less  than  as  a  thing  to  paint.  Delacroix 
was  not  a  landscape-painter,  so  we  cannot  suspect  him 
of  professional  bias ;  and  there  has  never  been  a  painter 
whom  we  could  more  easily  credit  with  an  inborn  love 
for  striking  and  even  spectacular  kinds  of  beauty.  But 
fine  scenery  was  not  essential  to  his  enjoyment  of 
Nature.  "The  poorest  little  alley,"  he  wrote  one  day 
from  a  shabby  suburb  of  Paris,  "with  its  straight  little 
leafless  saplings,  in  a  dull  and  flat  horizon,  can  say  as 
much  to  the  imagination  as  the  most  bepraised  of  sites. 
This  tiny  cotyledon  piercing  the  earth,  this  violet 
shedding  its  first  whiff  of  perfume,  are  enchanting.  I 
love  such  things  as  much  as  the  pines  of  Italy." 

This  is  the  voice  of  the  true  lover  of  Nature,  and  like 
it  was  Corot's  voice,  constantly  praising,  not  the 
grandeurs  which  he  had  seen  on  his  travels,  but  the 
tender,  gentle  subtile  beauties  around  his  home  at  Ville 
d'Avray,  and  more  than  anything  else,  the  humblest  of 
them  all — "my  leaves  and  my  little  birds."     If  one  is 


30  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

bom  to  love  Nature  as  those  men  did  and  all  true 
artists  do,  or  if  he  ever  learns  the  beneficent  lesson,  the 
quietest  scenes  will  impress  him,  the  most  familiar  will 
be  ever  new.  The  shadow  of  a  blackberry-vine,  as  it 
trails  over  a  gray  rock,  will  give  him  as  delightful  an 
emotion  as  the  sight  of  a  great  mountain ;  and  custom 
will  not  stale  his  pleasure,  for  it  will  be  as  infinitely 
varied,  as  perpetually  renewed,  as  the  leaves  on  the 
trees,  the  blades  of  grass  in  the  fields,  the  tints  in  the 
sunset  skies. 

People  who  run  about,  summer  after  summer,  in 
search  of  new  landscapes  to  admire,  will  often  tell  you 
that  it  is  because  they  love  Nature.  But  if  they  did 
they  would  be  much  less  apt  to  run  about;  they  could 
exercise  their  passion  within  narrower  limits,  and  they 
would  be  likely  to  content  themselves  within  such  limits 
because  a  particular  love  for  particular  beauties  would 
result  from  long  acquaintance  with  them. 

In  Mrs.  Robbin's  "Rescue  of  an  Old  Old  Place,"  she 
rightly  says  that  one  of  the  great  benefits  which  spring 
from  the  possession  of  a  bit  of  country  soil  is  the 
development  of  the  love  of  home,  the  suppression  of  that 
restless  desire  for  change  which  makes  of  so  many  Amer- 
icans "possible  tramps"  instead  of  established  citizens. 
But  a  genuine  love  for  Nature  may  serve  a  person 
pretty  well  in  place  of  the  actual  ownership  of  land; 
for  in  whatever  corner  of  the  country  he  may  chance  to 
live,  he  will  see,  understand,  and  appreciate  every  part 
and  phase  of  its  beauty,  and  thus,  in  a  sense,  feel  him- 
self the  owner  of  the  whole  region ;  and  the  oftener  he 
visits  it,  the  stronger  and  more  intimate  will  become  his 
attachment,  his  feeling  of  possession.    Of  course  he  will 


THE  LOVE  OF  NATURE  31 

not  be  without  a  keen  desire  to  see  as  much  of  the  big 
world  as  possible,  and  to  learn  how  many  kinds  of 
beauty  it  can  show.  But  this  desire  will  not  be  the 
imperious  need  for  "a  change"  which  is  felt  by  less 
fortunate  souls ;  and  often  it  will  be  so  much  weaker 
than  his  wish  to  stay  among  the  things  which  he  knows 
best  that  year  after  year  will  pass  and  foreign  lands,  or 
even  neighboring  country-sides,  will  tempt  in  vain  while 
he  watches  new  clouds  blow  over  his  familiar  hills,  new 
flowers  spring  up  in  his  familiar  woods,  and  every  long- 
loved  shrub  and  tree  assume  new  aspects  with  each 
season's  growth  and  alterations.  The  changes  which 
Nature  brings  every  moment  before  his  eyes  will  satiate 
his  desire  for  novelty. 

This  is  the  true  secret  of  every  kind  of  love:  if  a 
thing  really  appeals  to  us,  the  better  we  know  it  the 
more  we  care  about  it.  The  true  lover  of  Nature  loves 
her  as  he  loves  mankind.  He  has  his  favorite  corners  of 
the  world  as  he  has  his  friends,  and  does  not  constantly 
wish  to  exchange  them  for  others,  or  perpetually  con- 
trast their  attractions  with  the  attractions  of  others. 
If  everyone  admires  them  his  joy  in  them  is  increased; 
but  if  he  is  almost  alone  in  his  appreciation,  this  fact  is 
in  itself  the  source  of  a  special  kind  of  pleasure  and 
pride.  He  seeks  for  novelty  and  freshness  in  Nature 
as  he  likes  to  make  acquaintance  with  interesting 
strangers,  but  comes  back  as  gladly  to  the  familiar 
scene  as  to  the  familiar  face.  The  tree  which  he  has 
watched  as  it  grew  from  a  sapling  to  fine  maturity 
delights  him  even  more  than  a  finer  tree  about  which  no 
memories  or  hopes  are  clustered,  for  even  if  he  has  not 
planted  and  watered  it  himself,  even  if  it  grows  in  the 


32  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

neighboring  forest  instead  of  his  own  field,  he  loves  it 
with  a  personal,  proprietary  affection.  When  he  drives 
through  a  beautiful  new  country  his  eyes  are  perpetu- 
ally charmed;  but  when  he  drives  through  the  roads 
around  his  home  his  heart  is  touched  and  his  imagina- 
tion is  stirred  by  the  beauty  of  past  years  as  w41  as  by 
the  beauty  of  to-day,  and  by  the  hope  that  next  year's 
beauty  also  may  belong  to  him.  Each  tree  is  a  friend, 
each  bush  has  a  special  message  for  his  special  ear, 
each  flower  is  greeted  as  the  child  of  other  flowers  which 
he  knew  last  summer  in  the  same  corner  of  the  roadside. 
He  not  only  admires  what  he  sees — ^he  is  interested  by 
everything  he  sees  in  a  sense  that  is  impossible  where 
things  are  beheld  for  the  first  time.  And  true  love,  if  it 
means  admiration,  means  interest  also,  whether  inani- 
mate things  or  human  beings  are  in  question. 

Therefore,  one  who  truly  loves  Nature  does  not  need 
what  are  commonly  called  fine  views ;  he  needs  no  great 
ranges  of  mountains,  picturesque  stretches  of  rocky 
coast,  or  outlooks  over  wide  expanses  of  valley,  hill,  and 
river.  Every  view  not  seriously  marred  by  some  incon- 
gruous work  of  man  has  its  charm  for  his  eyes.  And 
he  recognizes,  moreover,  that  a  very  fine  view  must  often 
be  bought  at  the  expense  of  other  beauties.  If,  for 
instance,  there  are  mountains  around  him,  he  cannot 
have  that  far,  low  horizon-line  which,  stretching  its 
mighty  curve  at  a  seemingly  immeasurable  distance, 
gives  an  unequalled  sense  of  space,  freedom,  and  infinity. 
*'I  have  never  seen  the  sky  before,"  a  painter  once  ex- 
claimed who  had  passed  his  life  in  hilly  regions  and  now 
for  the  first  time  stood  in  the  flat,  quiet  country  near 
Cape  Cod ;  "I  did  not  know  that  it  was  so  vast,  or  so 


THE  LOVE  OF  NATURE  33 

near,  or  so  round,  or  that  there  were  so  many  stars,  or 
that  a  sight  of  them  all  could  be  so  magnificent.  I  never 
before  watched  the  moon  come  up  from  below  the  earth 
instead  of  merely  from  behind  the  hills  ;  and  I  never  saw 
the  whole  of  a  sunset  until  I  came  here."  And  he  seemed 
to  think  that  the  panorama  of  the  morning  and  evening 
and  midnight  heavens  was  as  admirable  as  any  terres- 
trial panorama  which  could  be  unrolled. 

Again,  in  our  crude  and  often  maltreated  land, 
grandeur  in  the  distance  often  means  a  forlorn  ragged- 
ness  in  the  foregrounds,  and  a  sensitive  eye  thinks  the 
foreground  of  a  picture  as  important  as  its  background. 
Where  forests  have  ruthlessly  been  cut  away,  and  where 
there  is  not  a  rich  soil  to  encourage  neat  and  careful 
methods  of  cultivation,  primeval  beauty  has  largely 
vanished  and  the  beauty  of  civilization  has  not  taken  its 
place.  The  true  lover  of  Nature  will  feel  this  painfully, 
and  all  the  magnificence  of  the  mountains  beyond  may 
not  compensate  him  for  the  lack  of  that  harmonious 
repose  in  general  effect  which  comes  when  all  parts  of  a 
picture  are  in  keeping. 

I  do  not  say  that  the  true  lover  of  Nature  cares 
nothing  for  grand  scenery — only  that  he  does  not 
actually  need  it.  Great  things  impress  him,  but  small 
ones  content  him,  and  he  gathers  pleasure  from  the 
roadside  grass  as  well  as  from  the  giant  oak  or  the  sky- 
line of  a  rugged  mountain-range.  There  is  a  beauty  of 
the  lily  and  a  beauty  of  the  pine,  a  beauty  of  the  moun- 
tain and  a  beauty  of  the  plain,  a  beauty  of  wide  out- 
looks, of  stately,  high-walled  amphitheaters,  and  of 
gentle,  sequestered  corners.  One  kind  necessarily  ex- 
cludes the  other  kinds ;  but  that  does  not  matter  if  each 


34  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

arrests  the  eye,  interests  the  mind,  and  appeals  to  the 
imagination  and  the  heart. 

Everyone  realizes  that  more  kinds  of  art  appeal  to 
the  connoisseur  than  to  the  ordinary  observer,  and  tha^ 
he  does  not  exalt  showy,  spectacular  kinds  above  all 
others.  All  the  greatest  artists  in  the  world  did  not 
paint  palace-ceilings  or  big  altar-pictures  ;  some  of  the 
world's  most  famous  masterpieces  measure  only  a  couple 
of  spans  and  do  not  show  a  single  note  of  vivid  color. 
And  so  it  is  with  Nature  and  her  masterpieces.  The 
finest  composition  wrought  with  mountain  peaks  and 
deep  ravines  is  not  more  beautiful  or  wonderful  than  one 
which  can  be  wrought  with  a  gray  boulder,  a  pine-tree, 
and  a  carpet  of  moss  or  fern ;  the  most  splendid  pano- 
ramic background  is  not  more  enchanting  than  may  be  a 
foreground  of  flowery  meadow,  with  a  middle  distance  of 
woodland,  and  no  background  at  all  except  the  luminous 
sky. 

Of  course  some  people  are  born  with  a  deep  and  true 
love  for  Nature,  but  even  in  them  I  think  this  love  does 
not  show  itself  very  early  in  life.  In  the  majority  of 
cases  it  seems  to  have  been  gradually  developed  rather 
than  spontaneously  felt.  And,  while  no  one  not  born 
with  a  poet's  soul  can  ever  learn  to  feel  Nature's  charms 
as  a  Corot  or  a  Wordsworth  did,  anyone  -can  learn  to  see 
them  pretty  clearly  unless  his  mind  is  hopelessly 
sluggish,  desperately  prosaic. 

How  can  such  knowledge  be  acquired?  One  way,  as  I 
have  said  in  speaking  of  trees,  is  to  study  the  fine  land- 
scape-pictures. Another  is  the  landscape-painter's  own 
way.  The  practice  of  painting,  even  in  the  most  un- 
trained, amateurish  fashion,  may  be  an  excellent  help 


THE  LOVE  OF  NATURE  35 

toward  the  development  of  a  love  for  Nature.  If  an 
intelligent  young  girl  would  spend  an  hour  a  day, 
during  a  single  summer,  faithfully  trying  to  set  down  in 
paint  what  ^he  sees  in  Nature — ^niow  a  flower  or  a  tree, 
now  a  bit  of  sunset-sky,  a  comer  of  a  hedge-row,  or  a 
little  stretch  of  river-bank — she  would  find  at  the  end 
of  the  season  that  she  had  gained  new  eyes.  She  would 
see  a  thousand  things  she  had  never  seen  before,  find 
beauty  in  many  that  before  had  seemed  ugly,  and  realize 
the  difference  between  merely  "liking"  Nature  and  truly 
appreciating  it.  It  would  not  matter  if  all  her  studies 
were  failures  and  were  torn  up  in  disgust  as  fast  as  they 
were  finished.  She  would  have  attained  a  great  end, 
achieved  a  real  success  ;  for  she  would  have  enlarged  her 
own  powers  of  enjoyment  to  the  sweetening  and  digni- 
fying of  all  the  rest  of  her  life.  Much  amateur  sketch- 
ing is  done  in  this  country  every  summer,  but  I  fear  it  is 
not  often  done  in  this  spirit.  The  aim  is  to  produce 
pretty  pictures,  not  to  cultivate  the  painter's  own 
intelligence.  And  while  the  aim  generally  remains  un- 
attained,  intelligence  is  scarcely  increased;  for,  as  the 
prettiness  of  the  sketch  has  been  the  ruling  motive,  a 
subject  has  most  often  been  chosen  because  it  was  easy 
to  do,  not  because  it  was  particularly  interesting  in 
itself,  and  it  has  been  superficially  looked  at,  not 
lovingly  studied. 


IV 

CR^IC  ART  * 
Frank  A.  Waugh 

Big  issues  are  stirring  in  the  rural  districts  of  Amer- 
ica. The  farming  communities,  and  the  small  towns 
dependent  on  them,  have  reached  a  stage  of  genuine  and 
confident  prosperity.  It  is  no  longer  a  question  with 
them  whether  they  can  live  through  the  winter  and  pay 
the  interest  on  the  mortgage.  The  main  problem  is  not 
now  how  to  make  more  money,  but  how  to  live  more  com- 
fortably. The  way  the  farmers  spend  money  for  auto- 
mobiles proves  this. 

Better  homes  and  better  home  surroundings  are  the 
matters  of  prime  concern.  Better  sichools,  better  play- 
grounds, better  churches,  better  libraries,  better  roads, 
are  wanted — better  cemeteries,  even.  In  the  main,  these 
are  community  problems,  to  be  solved'by  the  cooperative 
action  of  the  whole  neighborhood.  Cooperation  has 
been  talked  of  as  the  coming  remedy  for  all  the  farmer's 
difficulties ;  but  the  word  has  been  given  too  narrow  a 
meaning  and  application.  The  neighborhood  can 
accomplish  more  by  cooperating  to  own  a  grange  hall, 
or  the  boys  can  do  better  cooperating  to  maintain  a 
baseball  league,  than  the  farmers  can  cooperating  to 
buy  fertilizer  twenty-five  cents  under  market  price.  And 
the  best  place  to  learn  how  to  cooperate  is  in  the  care  of 

*  Prom  "Rural  Improvement,"  by  x>€nuission  of  the  author  and  of  the 

publishers,  the  Orange  Judd  Company. 

36 


'JT!/- 


CIVIC  ART"  "  37 

*7  _^ 

public  properly,  such  as  paries,  c'oTfiTffSffs;  playgrounds, 

schools,  and  roads  which  we  own  in  common. 

The  country  needs  to  be  improved.  Some  of  us  who 
live  in  the  country  and  love  it  hate  to  admit  this.  But 
the  steady  stream  of  young  folks — and  some  older  ones 
— moving  toward  the  city  shows  that  most  people  still 
find  the  city  more  attractive  than  the  country.  Look 
what  has  been  done  for  the  city !  Fine  schools,  theaters, 
picture  shows,  playgrounds,  parks,  music,  boulevards — 
play,  beauty,  and  entertainment.  The  simple  fact  is 
that  the  country  must  do  something  to  offset  these 
attractions  or  the  exodus  of  live  young  men  and  women, 
will  go  on  forever. 

Better  farming — bigger  crops  and -better  prices — will 
do  something.  Better  houses  and  household  -equipment 
will  do  more.  Better  neighborhood  equipment  for 
recreation  and  wholesome  social  intercourse  will  do  still 
more.  There  must  be  improvement  all  along  the  line. 
This  is  the  Rural  Improvement  which  I  would  preach. 

At  the  same  time  I  would  point  out  that  any  improve- 
ment of  this  sort  can  best  begin  on  its  physical  side. 
The  concrete  problems  of  physical  property  are  easier 
to  grasp;  and  if  it  is  true,  as  it  partly  is,  that  a  man 
must  have  a  sound  body  in  order  to  support  a  vigorous 
mind  and  a  healthy  conscience,  it  is  more  truly  true  that 
a  community  must  be  clean  and  orderly  physically  in 
order  to  be  clean  and  orderly  socially  and  morally.  One 
of  the  strongest  elements  in  general  agricultural  im- 
provement is  to  be  found  in  the  contribution  offered  by 
civic  art — the  art  which  builds  a  sound  physical  frame 
for  the  support  of  a  healthy  community  life. 

Art  in  general  has  no  very  high  reputation  in  Amer- 


2?540a 


38  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

ica.  It  is  thought  to  be  not  sufficiently  "practical." 
Yet  at  present  this  mistaken  view  is  giving  way  to  a 
better  understanding.  In  the  first  place  people  are 
beginning  to  see  that  anything  is  none  the  less  useful 
for  being  beautiful.  A  beautiful  bridge  will  carry  just 
as  big  a  load  as  an  ugly  one.  A  beautiful  and  dignified 
house  is  just  as  comfortable  as  a  wretched  plain  one.  A 
well-proportioned  silo  will  keep  the  silage  just  as  sweet 
as  an  ugly  unpainted  one  with  the  top  off.  Beauty  does 
not  interfere  with  utility,  nor  utility  with  beauty.  The 
two  are  sisters.  They  should  walk  hand  in  hand.  Noth- 
ing can  be  truly  beautiful  unless  it  is  perfectly  suited  to 
its  proper  use;  and,  conversely,  nothing  can  perfectly 
serve  its  highest  uses  imlcss  it  is  beautiful. 

Thus  we  are  awakening  In  this  country  (to  put  the 
whole  meaning  into  one  phrase)  to  tJie  necessity  of 
having  things  done  right.  A  barn  is  not  strictly  right 
until  it  serves  its  native  purposes  to  the  fullest  possible 
measure — and  wfien  this  full  and  high  and  overflowing 
stage  of  utility  Is  reached,  the  barn  must  be  also 
beautiful. 

Now  in  public  affairs  (which  we  may  call  also  civic 
affairs  or  community  affairs)  we  reach  this  conclusion  a 
trifle  later.  We  sooner  see  that  our  own  houses  and 
silos  must  be  right  than  we  realize  that  the  public  school- 
houses,  roads,  and  cemeteries  come  under  the  same  high 
necessity.  But  this  second  stage  has  been  fully  reached 
in  many  American  communities,  and  the  need  is  keenly 
felt  of  realizing  in  all  public  works  the  highest  utility 
combined  with  the  utmost  beauty.  And  this  conclusion 
may  almost  be  adopted  as  the  definition  of  art — to 
realize  the  maximum  of  utility  combined  with  the  maxi- 


CIVIC  ART  39 

mum  of  beauty.  When  thus  rightly  understood,  art 
becomes  an  indispensa'ble  factor  in  daily  life — whether 
private  or  public  life — and  not  a  mere  superfluity  fit  for 
the  attention  only  of  dudes,  decadents,  and  highbrows. 

Civic  art,  therefore,  may  be  defined  as  the  practice  of 
doing  things  right  with  reference  to  all  public  works — 
or  to  state  it  more  explicitly,  it  is  the  constant  endeavor 
to  secure  in  all  public  works  the  maximum  of  utility 
combined  with  the  maximum  of  beauty. 

Civic  art  thus  becomes  a  branch  of  landscape  archi- 
tecture, which  endeavors  to  secure  for  all  the  outdoor 
needs  of  humanity  the  greatest  convenience  plus  the 
utmost  order  and  beauty.  The  principles  of  civic  art, 
then,  are  the  same  as  those  of  landscape  architecture, 
and  this  great  art  must  be  chiefly  appealed  to  to  supply 
both  the  principles  and  the  detailed  practices  for  appli- 
cation in  the  newer  branch  of  civic  art. 

It  would  lead  us  too  far  afield  from  our  present 
studies  should  we  attempt  here  to  elucidate  all  the  basic 
principles  of  landscape  architecture  and  to  apply  them 
to  the  subject  in  hand.  We  may  only  say  that  here  the 
great  principles  of  order,  which  are  the  principles  of 
design,  rule  supreme.  To  have  everything  done  in  per- 
fect order — to  have  everything  kept  in  perfect  order — = 
this  is  the  keynote  of  civic  art. 

Civic  art  strives  to  secure  this  perfect  good  order — • 
this  maximum  of  utility  plus  a  maximum  of  beauty — in 
the  things  which  belong  to  the  community.  These  public 
possessions  are  streets,  commons,  parks,  playgrounds, 
school  buildings,  churches,  libraries,  town  halls,  court 
houses,  and  scenery,  with,  various  other  important  items. 
Unfortunately  the  sense,  and  even  the  knowledge,  of 


40  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTUHE 

common  public  ownership  in  such  things  is  still  very 
weak  in  America.  For  too  many  years  we  have  laid 
every  stress  on  the  private  ownership  of  our  own 
individual  property.  All  laws  have  been  made  to  protect 
individuals  in  this  personal  right.  All  preaching  has 
aimed  to  quicken  conscience  with  reference  to  the  rights 
of  others.  And  so  we  have  almost  forgotten  that  most 
of  the  greatest  gifts  in  the  world  belong  to  nobody — 
that  is,  to  everybody — that  is,  to  us  all.  The  air  and 
the  blue  sky  still  belong  to  us  anyway.  The  sweet  water 
that  falls  from  heaven  belongs  to  us,  too,  except  that 
many  of  us  have  chosen  to  live  in  cities  and  to  pay  some- 
one to  bring  us  our  share  of  it.  Then  the  schools  are 
not  mine  nor  yours,  but  ours ;  and  the  roads  belong  to 
no  man,  though  the  automobile  hog  may  act  as  though 
they  did;  and  the  churches  are  the  property  of  all, 
though  Protestant  sectarianism  has  indirectly  incul- 
cated the  belief  that  one  or  two  men  own  each  church ; 
and  the  cemeteries  are  public  property  where  we  are  all 
at  last  "free  and  equal"  in  spite  of  the  Declaration  of 
Independence. 

And  so  all  of  us,  acting  together,  strive  to  secure  the 
best  results  obtainable  in  the  development  of  our 
common  property,  to  secure  the  very  highest  utility,  to 
enjoy  the  greatest  possible  beauty,  and  to  maintain 
everything  in  the  best  possible  order.     This  is  civic  art. 

In  the  cities,  civic  art  has  been  developed  first.  There 
are  sufficient  reasons  for  that  fact.  But  the  country, 
equally  with  the  city,  has  public  property,  and  should 
'  have  more,  and  this  property  needs  to  be  developed  to 
its  highest  utility  and  to  be  equipped  with  every  avail- 
able beauty.    Unfortunately  again  the  sense  of  common 


CIVIC  ART  41 

ownership  is  weaker  in  the  country  than  in  the  city,  and 
harder  to  arouse.  Practical  cooperation  is  harder  to 
secure.  Greater  efforts  are  necessary,  therefore,  to  get 
community  improvements  under  way  in  the  country. 

Another  difficulty  lies  in  the  fact  that  communities 
have  not  such  definite  geographic  limits  in  the  rural 
districts  as  in  the  cities.  An  incorporated  city  has  very 
precise  boundaries.  Any  individual  family  resides  in 
one  city  and  not  in  two.  (Families  with  residences  in 
New  York,  Newport,  Palm  Beach,  and  Reno  do  not 
count  for  anything  in  any  connection.)  In  the  coun- 
try, however,  every  farm  is  the  center  of  a  neighborhood. 
These  neighborhoods  overlap  and  overlap  again,  never 
coming  to  an  end  except  at  the  ocean  or  the  impassable 
mountain.  Practically  this  is  the  very  difficult  situa- 
tion throughout  the  Central  and  Westeni  states.  In  the 
New  England  states  the  town  unit  is  so  well  developed 
politically  that  it  makes  a  very  convenient  basis  for  all 
kinds  of  community  action.  A  political  club,  a  farmers' 
club,  or  a  civic  improvement  society  may  easily  be  or- 
ganized for  any  given  town.  Everyone  in  the  town  will 
accept  his  natural  allegiance  with  such  a  society  and 
work  with  it  to  the  best  of  his  ability. 

In  the  Central  and  Western  states  the  county  Is  the 
political  unit.  But  the  county  is  too  big  for  the  most 
effective  work  in  civic  betterment.  Certain  enterprises, 
to  be  sure,  can  be  undertaken  on  a  county-wide  scale, 
and  should  then  be  under  the  direction  of  county  socie- 
ties. In  those  states  where  county  patriotism  has  sub- 
stantial growth  every  effort  should  be  made  to  put  it  to 
good  use.  County  improvement  societies  may  be  formed, 
on  whose  programs  would  appear  such  projects  as  (a) 


42  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

better  county  roads,  (b)  better  county  buildings,  (c) 
county  high  schools  and  agricultural  schools^  (d)  scenic 
and  historic  reservations. 

But  smaller  units  of  organization  must  be  found,  even 
in  most  enterprising  counties.  Village  improvement 
societies  can  take  care  of  the  small  towns,  and  civic 
clubs  or  boards  of  trade  or  women's  clubs  of  the  larger 
ones.  The  country  districts  must  not  be  forgotten,  but 
should  be  divided  up  amongst  the  granges  and  amongst 
the  local  farmers'  clubs  (most  of  which  are  still  to  bo 
organized) . 

We  have  spoken  of  the  county  unit,  the  town  unit,  the 
village  unit,  and  the  very  indefinite  country-neighbor- 
hood unit.  Before  dropping  this  subject  we  must  have 
a  look  at  the  state  unit.  As  a  matter  of  fact  there  are 
many  civic  enterprises  of  state-wide  scope,  such  as  state 
roads,  state  parks,  etc.  Let  it  be  distinctly  understood 
that  some  of  the  finest  civic  accomplishments  of  the  last 
decade  have  been  in  this  field,  and  we  may  reasonably 
hope  for  more  in  the  next  decade.  We  have  a  sort  of 
reason  for  this  in  the  significant  fact  that  the  civic 
feeling  is  stronger  within  state  boundaries  than  any- 
where else  in  America.  A  Kansan  is  more  proud  of 
Kansas  than  of  all  the  other  stars  on  the  flag:  and  a 
Mississippian  will  do  more  for  his  state  than  for  any 
other  geographical  unit,  big  or  little,  in  the  universe ; 
and  a  New  Yorker  always  thinks  that  North  America 
revolves  round  the  Empire  State.  Inasmuch  as  patri- 
otism and  civic  pride  are  pretty  much  one  and  the 
same  thing,  and  as  this  civic  pride  is  the  ultimate  foun- 
dation of  all  civic  improvement,  we  may  properly  expect 
best  results  where  local  patriotism  is  strongest,  and  may 


CIVIC  ART  43 

thus  hope  to  accomplish  some  of  the  biggest  and  best 
things  through  state-wide  movements. 

The  time  is  now  fully  ripe  for  the  organization  of 
state  campaigns  in  all  states  where  a  fair  stage  of 
social  and  economic  development  (i.e.,  a  reasonably  well 
organized  civilization)  has  been  attained.  Such  enter- 
prises promise  to  be  most  effective  if  initiated  and 
directed  by  the  state  agricultural  college.  A  strong, 
aggressive,  modern  agricultural  college  can  easily  put 
into  the  field  a  small  corps  of  experts  who  will  assist 
the  local  communities  in  all  the  undertakings  of  civic 
betterment.  These  experts,  carrying  this  civic  better- 
ment propaganda  throughout  the  state,  would  deal 
directly  with  such  problems  as  these:  (a)  Good  roads, 
location,  construction,  and  maintenance,  (b)  roadside 
and  street  planting,  and  care  of  roadside  trees,  (c) 
acquisition,  planning,  and  management  of  public  reser- 
vations, parks,  picnic  grounds,  commons,  and  play- 
grounds, (d)  location  and  design  of  school  grounds, 
especially  country  schools  and  those  providing  school 
gardens,  experimental  grounds,  etc.,  (e)  location  and 
design  and  care  of  public  cemeteries,  (f)  care  of  country 
churches  and  church  grounds,  (g)  location  and  design 
of  all  public  buildings,  more  especially  those  outside  of 
cities,  (h)  design  and  care  of  farm  yards  and  village 
yards,  (i)  design,  service,  and  sanitation  of  farm  build- 
ings. In  every  one  of  these  lines  improvement  is  pos- 
sible and  desirable.  Improvement  in  greater  or  less 
degree  can  be  secured  by  putting  before  the  people, 
systematically  and  urgently,  the  best  modern  ideas  on 
these  several  subjects.  No  better  line  of  work  for  rural 
betterment  can  possibly  be  undertaken  by  the  exten- 


44  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

sion  services  now  organized  in  many  agricultural  col- 
leges, or  by  any  other  organizations  having  in  view  the 
improvement  of  country  life  conditions. 

AU  these  civic  improvement  enterprises  always  look 
very  formidable  to  the  inexperienced  person.  Talk 
about  town  planning,  country  planning,  or  a  general 
state  plan  sounds  altogether  futile  in  such  ears.  What 
can  be  done  after  all  to  change  the  plan  of  a  town 
already  in  existence  .f*  However,  the  works  of  civic 
improvement  are,  in  fact,  much  easier  to  accomplish 
than  the  public  ever  believes.  For  the  greatest  part 
civic  art  undertakes  only  to  do  in  the  right  way  instead 
of  in  the  wrong  way  things  which  have  to  he  done  one 
way  or  the  other.  Now,  most  people,  even  town  and 
county  officials,  would  rather  do  things  right  than  to 
do  them  wrong.  As  the  right  way  is  usually  the 
cheapest  way,  especially  in  the  long  run,  there  is  in 
this  fact  another  strong  preference  for  the  best  things, 
whenever  the  public  can  be  helped  to  see  what  plans 
are  actually  cheapest  and  best.  The  important  point 
is  to  see  that  the  public  has  a  fair  chance  to  know  what 
is  best.  In  an  enormous  number  of  cases  public  ques- 
tions are  decided  without  this  knowledge. 

In  an  experience  in  civic  work  covering  several  years 
I  have  often  been  surprised  at  the  readiness,  even  avid- 
ity, with  which  apparently  radical  suggestions  are 
sometimes  accepted.  I  once  asked  an  audience  in  a 
country  town  if  they  owned  any  public  picnic  ground. 
No,  they  said.  Had  they  any  places  in  town  attrac- 
tive enough  for  such  uses?  Oh  yes,  plenty  of  them! 
And  then,  after  the  lecture,  and  before  we  left  the  room, 
three  men  said  they  would  personally  give  the  land  to 


CIVIC  ART  45 

the  town.  Dozens  of  similar  instances  could  be  related 
illustrating  the  ease  with  which  the  most  substantial 
improvements  are  speedily  and  easily  realized  when  the 
right  idea  is  favorably  presented. 

In  other  cases  more  time  is  needed.  Indeed,  the  time 
element  is  of  supreme  importance  in  most  projects  for 
public  works.  It  requires  time  for  any  new  idea  to 
"soak  in."  When  a  new  improvement  is  proposed  it 
should  be  put  fairly,  fully,  and  clearly  before  the  public, 
and  kept  there.  Let  it  be  a  plan  for  a  new  road  or  a 
ball  field,  if  a  well-studied  plan  can  be  widely  circulated 
and  properly  explained,  and  then  if  the  drawings  and 
data  can  be  put  up  in  plain  view  in  the  post  office  or 
other  public  place,  and  kept  there,  perhaps  for  several 
years,  the  work  will  eventually  be  carried  out.  It  will 
almost  do  itself.  The  people  become  accustomed  to 
the  idea,  they  accept  it  as  a  probable  result,  and  when 
the  proper  moment  arrives  they  will  assist  in  its  final 
realization.  Patience,  prudence,  and  preparation  are 
the  watchwords  of  civic  improvement. 

One  more  point  of  fundamental  importance  must  be 
borne  in  mind.  Although  civic  art  deals  only  with  the 
physical  features  of  the  community  equipment  (that 
is,  with  public  property  of  one  sort  or  another),  these 
physical  elements  do  not  exist  by  themselves  and  cer- 
tainly not  for  themselves.  Industrial,  social,  educa- 
tional, religious,  and  other  factors  are  present  and 
powerful  in  the  community  life,  and  it  is,  indeed,  for 
these  things  that  the  physical  equipment  is  used.  Now 
civic  art  in  any  form — village  improvement,  rural 
improvement,  or  state  improvement  campaign — can- 
not go  very  far  by  itself.     Improvement  of  the  streets 


46  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

depends  partly  on  improvement  of  local  politics, 
and  this  in  turn  on  better  schools,  and  all  together 
on  better  churches  and  a  growing  spirit  of  honesty 
and  public  service.  Furthermore,  agricultural  and 
industrial  conditions  must  be  improved  in  order  that 
farms  and  factories  may  yield  larger  returns  for 
the  support  of  churches,  schools,  playgrounds,  roads, 
and  even  cemeteries.  All  community  advancement  must 
be  gained  by  coordinated  advance  all  along  the  line. 
Improvement  of  roads  and  public  grounds  must  be  ac- 
companied by  improvement  in  schools,  by  reform  in 
politics,  and  by  genuine  religious  revivals.  In  like 
manner  a  wild  religious  upheaval  without  better  streets 
is  a  waste  of  breath,  or  political  reform  without  better 
schools  is  a  delusion,  or  more  scientific  agriculture  with- 
out more  picnics  and  better  churches  and  happier 
households  is  only  vanity  and  vexation  of  spirit. 

The  great  advantages  of  civic  art  are  two:  First, 
it  deals  with  concrete  problems  and  materials :  that  is, 
with  property ;  and  humanity,  especially  American 
humanity,  has  a  most  ineradicable  belief  in  property. 
Civic  art,  therefore,  supplies  the  basis  on  which  com- 
munities most  quickly  rally,  and  on  which  a  genuine 
cooperation  can  be  most  easily  and  effectively  estab- 
lished. Secondly,  civic  improvement  thereby  becomes 
the  indispensable  training  school  for  all  higher  forms 
of  neighborly  cooperation,  such  as  deal  with  political, 
educational,  and  religious  reforms.  In  a  double  sense 
civic  art  is  the  unique  foundation  on  which  to  build 
every  kind  of  civic  improvement. 


V 

THE  ART  OF  GARDENING* 

Mrs.  Schuyler  Van  Rensselaer 

The  Arts  of  Design  are  usually  named  as  three: 
architecture,  sculpture,  and  painting.  It  is  the  popular 
belief  that  a  man  who  practises  one  of  these  is  an  artist, 
and  that  other  men  who  work  with  forms  and  colors 
are  at  the  best  but  artisans.  Yet  there  is  a  fourth  Art 
of  Design  which  well  deserves  to  rank  with  them,  for 
it  demands  quite  as  much  in  the  way  of  esthetic  feeling, 
creative  power,  and  executive  skill.  This  is  the  art 
which  creates  beautiful  compositions  upon  the  surface 
of  the  ground. 

The  mere  statement  of  its  purpose  should  show  that 
it  is  truly  an  art.  The  eflfort  to  produce  organic  beauty 
is  what  makes  a  man  an  artist ;  neither  the  production 
of  a  merely  useful  organism  nor  of  a  beautiful  isolated 
detail  can  suffice ;  he  must  compose  a  beautiful  whole 
with  a  number  of  related  parts.  Therefore,  while  he 
who  raises  useful  crops  is  an  agriculturalist,  and  he  who 
grows  plants  for  their  individual  charms  is  a  horticul- 
turalist,  and  he  who  constructs  solid  roads  is  an  engi- 
neer, the  man  who  uses  ground  and  plants,  roads  and 
paths,  and  water  and  accessory  buildings,  with  an  eye 
to  organic  beauty  of  effect,  is — or  ought  to  be — an 
artist. 

*  From  "Art  Out  of  Doors,"  by  Mrs.  Schuyler  Van  Rensselaer.  Copy- 
right, 1893,  by  Charles  Scribner's  Sons.     By  permission  of  the  publishers. 

47 


48  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTUHE 

All  the  Arts  of  Design  are  thus  akin  in  general  char- 
acter and  purpose.  But  they  differ  from  each  other  in 
many  ways,  and  in  studying  the  peculiarities  of  garden- 
ing art  we  find  some  reasons  why  its  affinity  with  its 
sisters  is  so  commonly  ignored. 

One  difference  is  that  it  uses  the  same  materials  as 
Nature  herself.  In  what  is  called  the  "naturalistic" 
style  of  gardening  it  uses  them  to  produce  many  effects 
which,  under  favoring  conditions,  Nature  might  have 
produced  without  man's  aid.  Then,  the  better  the 
result,  the  less  likely  it  is  to  be  recognized  as  an  arti- 
ficial, an  artistic,  result ;  the  more  perfectly  the  artist 
attains  his  end,  the  more  likely  we  are  to  forget  that  he 
has  been  at  work. 

I  dare  say  that  there  are  many  persons  who  do  not 
know  that  a  large  portion  of  Central  Park  was  created 
by  Mr.  Olmsted  and  his  associates,  in  almost  as  literal 
a  sense  as  any  painter  ever  created  a  pictured  land- 
scape; who  do  not  remember  the  dismal,  barren,  tree- 
less, half-rocky,  and  half-swampy  waste  which,  less 
than  forty  years  ago,  occupied  all  the  tracts  below 
the  reservoir ;  who  fancy  that  Nature  made  them  beau- 
tiful with  meadows,  ponds,  trees,  and  shrubs,  with  wood- 
land passages,  and  verdurous  cliffs  and  hollows ;  who 
think  that  all  man  has  done  has  been  to  lay  out  the 
roads  and  paths,  and  build  the  terraces,  bridges,  and 
shelters.  If  they  will  read  any  contemporary  descrip- 
tion of  the  quondam  aspect  of  these  tracts,  now  so 
natural-looking  in  their  beauty,  and  will  then  study 
the  Park  to-day  and  consider  what  difficulties  must 
have  attended  the  process  which  made  it  lovely  to  the 
eyes  and  convenient  for  the  feet  and  wheels  of  crowd- 


THE  ART  OF  GARDENING  49 

ing  thousands,  they  may  gain  some  idea  of  what  land- 
scape-gardening means ;  they  may  understand  why  we 
who  have  studied  it  even  from  the  outside  rank  it  quite 
as  high  as  any  other  art. 

In  naturalistic  work  such  as  this,  I  say,  we  may  care- 
lessly admire  the  result  while  forgetting  that  an  artist 
wrought  it.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  when  an  artist 
has  essayed  the  formal,  "architectural"  style  of  garden- 
ing, and  has  disposed  Nature's  materials  in  frankly  non- 
natural  ways,  his  activity  will  be  recognized,  but,  in 
our  country  at  least,  few  will  stop  to  consider  whether 
it  has  been  artistic  or  not.  A  more  or  less  intelligent 
love  for  natural  beauty  is  very  common  with  us  while 
good  judgment  in  art  is  very  rare.  Therefore — es- 
peciallj'^  as  we  are  unaccustomed  to  thinking  of  art  out- 
of-doors  at  all — we  do  not  understand  that  in  certain 
situations  a,  formal  design  may  be  the  best.  Seeing  that 
it  is  not  Nature's  work,  or  like  Nature's  work,  we 
condemn  it  as  a  wilful  misuse  of  good  natural  material. 
We  recognize  man's  product,  but  we  do  not  appreciate 
any  beauty  that  it  may  possess. 

Again,  gardening-art  differs  from  all  others  in  the 
unstable  character  of  its  results.  When  surfaces  are 
modelled  and  plants  arranged.  Nature  and  the  artist 
must  still  work  a  long  time  together  before  the  true 
picture  appears;  and  when  once  it  has  revealed  itself, 
day-to-day  attention  will  be  forever  needed  to  preserve 
it  from  the  altering  effects  of  time-  It  is  easy  to 
imagine,  therefore,  how  often  neglect  or  interference 
must  work  havoc  with  the  best  intentions,  how  often 
the  passage  of  years  must  destroy  or  travesty  the  best 
results. 


50  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

Still  another  thing  which  prevents  popular  recog- 
nition of  this  art  is  our  lack  of  clearly  understood 
terais  with  which  to  speak  ahout  it.  "Gardens"  once 
meant  pleasure-grounds  of  everj'  kind,  and  "gardener" 
then  had  an  adequately  artistic  sound.  But  as  the 
meaning  of  the  first  term  was  gradually  specialized, 
so  the  other  graduall}"^  came  to  denote  a  mere  grower 
of  plants.  "Lands cape-gardcjier"  was  a  title  invented 
by  the  artists  of  the  eighteenth  century  to  mark  the  new 
tendency  which  they  represented — the  search  for 
"natural"  as  opposed  to  "formal"  beauty  ;  and  it  seemed 
to  them  to  need  an  apology  as  savoring,  perhaps,  of 
grandiloquence  or  conceit.  But  as  taste  declined  in 
England,  this  title  was  assumed  by  men  who  had  not  the 
slightest  right,  judged  either  by  their  aims  or  by  their 
results,  to  be  considered  artists ;  and  to-day  it  is  fallen 
into  such  disrepute  that  it  is  often  replaced  by  "land- 
scape-architect." French  usage  supports  this  term, 
and  it  is  in  many  respects  a  good  one.  But  its  derivative, 
"landscape-architecture,"  is  unsatisfactory;  and  so,  on 
the  other  hand,  is  "landscape-artist,"  although  "land- 
scape-art" is  a  good  general  term.  Perhaps  the  best  we 
can  do  is  to  keep  to  "landscape-gardener,"  trying  to 
remember  that  it  ought  always  to  mean  an  artist  and 
an  artist  only,  but  that  this  artist  is  not  always  called 
upon  to  design  landscapes,  either  large  or  small,  or 
even  naturalistic  gardens. 

The  landscape-gardener,  when  his  title  is  most  ap- 
propriate, stands  with  the  sculptor  and  the  painter, 
in  contrast  to  the  architect,  in  that  he  takes  his  inspira- 
tion directly  from  Nature,  working  after  the  schemes 
and  from  the  models  which  she  supplies.     But  in  some 


THE  ART  OF  GARDENING  51 

respects  he  stands  quite  alone.  The  painter  works  with 
actual  colors,  but  with  mere  illusions  of  form,  and  the 
sculptor  creates  forms  but  uses  colors,  if  at  all  in  con- 
ventional and  subordinate  ways ;  but  the  landscape- 
gardener  depends  upon  color  and  form  in  equal  measure, 
and  can  never  dispense  with  the  one  or  the  other.  Then 
again,  he  takes  from  Nature  not  only  his  models  but  his 
materials  and  methods.  His  colors  are  those  of  her  own 
palette,  his  clays  and  marbles  are  her  rocks  and  soils, 
and  his  technical  processes  are  the  same  that  she  em- 
ploys. He  does  not  show  her  possibilities  of  beauty  as 
in  a  mirror  of  his  own  inventing.  He  helps  her  in  her 
actual  efforts  to  realize  them — he  works  in  and  for  and 
with  her. 

This  fact  limits  and  hampers  him  in  certain  ways ; 
but,  under  fortunate  conditions,  it  allows  him  to  achieve 
what  no  other  artist  can — perfection.  "The  sculptor 
or  the  painter,"  writes  a  recent  critic,  "observes  defects 
in  the  single  model ;  he  notices  in  many  models  scattered 

excellences To   correct  those   defects,   to 

re-unite  those  excellences,  becomes  his  aim.  He  cannot 
rival  Nature  by  producing  anything  exactly  like  her 
work,  but  he  can  create  something  which  shall  show 
what  Nature  strives  after. 

" The  mind  of  man  comprehends  her  effort 

and  though  the  skill  of  man  cannot  compete  with  her 
in  the  production  of  particulars,  man  is  able  by  art  to 
anticipate  her  desires  and  to  exhibit  an  image  of  what 
she  was  intending."  But  the  landscape-gardener  is 
Nature's  rival,  does  create  things  like  her  own,  can 
compete  with  her  in  perfect  workmanship,  for  she  her- 
self works  with  him  while  he  is  re-unitinsr  her  scattered 


52  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

excellences  and  obliteratinf^  her  defects.  What  he  can- 
not do  she  does  for  him,  from  the  building  of  mountains 
and  the  spreading  of  skies  to  the  perfecting  of  those 
"particulars"  which  turn  the  keenest  chisel  and  blunt 
the  subtilest  brush — ^to  the  curling  of  a  fern-frond  and 
the  veining  of  a  rose.  Of  course  she  will  not  everywhere 
do  everything.  If  part  of  her  work  is  in  completing 
man's,  part  is  in  preparing  for  it,  and  he  must  respect 
the  canvas  and  frame  which  she  furnishes  for  his 
picture,  the  general  scheme  which  she  prescribes.  He 
cannot  ask  her  to  build  him  mountains  in  a  plain,  to 
change  a  hill-side  rivulet  to  a  river,  or  to  make  tropical 
trees  grow  under  northern  skies.  But  he  can  always 
persuade  her  to  produce  beauty  of  some  sort,  if  he  is 
wise  enough  to  know  for  what  sort  he  should  ask. 

This,  of  course,  is  true  only  in  a  theoretic  sense. 
Theoretically,  there  is  not  a  spot  on  earth  an  artist 
could  not  beautify.  But  some  spots  would  demand  a 
life  of  antediluvian  length,  and  dollars  as  plentiful  as 
the  sands  by  the  sea.  Practically,  the  landscape- 
gardener,  perhaps  more  than  any  other  artist,  is  limited 
by  questions  of  time  and  money.  And  his  partnership 
with  Nature  limits  him  as  regards  not  only  the  sort  but 
the  degree  of  beauty  Avhich  he  can  achieve.  Nature  may 
suggest  tihe  same  sort  in  two  places,  but  if  she  prepares 
lavishly  for  it  in  the  one  spot  and  parsimoniously  in  the 
other,  the  best  skill  in  the  world  may  not  be  able  to 
succeed  as  well  here  as  there.  Yet,  I  say,  the  landscape- 
gardener  can  always  count  upon  that  perfection  in 
details  which  painter  and  sculptor  never  get;  and  his 
general  effects  as  well  as  his  details  have  the  great  ad- 
vantage of  being  alive.     A  great  advantage  indeed,  for 


THE  ART  OF  GARDENING  53 

it  means  many  beautiful  results  in  every  piece  of  work 
instead  of  merely  one,  and  perpetual  variation  in  each 
of  the  many.  His  aim  is,  in  general,  the  same  as  that  of 
the  landscape-painter,  who  knows  that  the  most  potent 
factors  in  Nature's  beauty  are  light  and  atmosphere. 
No  things  in  the  world,  not  even  the  color  and  texture 
of  the  human  skin,  are  so  difficult  to  simulate,  so  impos- 
sible to  imitate  in  paint  as  these.  But  to  the  landscape- 
gardener's  pictures  Nature  freely  supplies  them,  and  not 
only  in  the  one  phase  for  which  a  painter  strives,  but  in 
a  thousand,  changing  them  with  each  day  of  the  year 
and  each  hour  of  the  day.  And  with  the  passing  days 
and  seasons  she  changes  also  his  terrestrial  effects,  so 
that  no  part  of  his  work  is  twice  the  same,  although, 
if  rightly  wroug'ht,  it  is  alwaj'^s  beautiful. 

But  does  not  this  partnership  with  Nature  deprive 
the  artist  of  the  chance  for  self-expression?  Art, 
after  all,  is  not  imitation  but  interpretation ;  and 
interpretation  implies  the  exercise  of  choice  and  inven- 
tiveness, the  revelation  of  personal  thought.  No  artist 
can  copy  Nature,  and  if  he  could  his  work  would  not  'be 
worth  while.  Its  only  value  would  be  historical,  not 
artistic;  it  would  be  prized  only  as  the  permanent 
record  of  a  perishable  fact.  To  make  his  result  worth 
while  as  art,  he  must  put  into  it  a  portion  of  himself. 

If  the  landscape-gardener  were  indeed  denied  the 
chance  to  do  this  he  could  not  be  more  than  a  skilful 
artisan.  But  he  is  not  denied  it.  In  fact,  he  cannot 
escape  if  he  would  from  the  necessity  for  self-expression. 
It  is  not  truer  to  say  of  him  than  of  the  painter  or 
the  sculptor  that  he  copies  Nature.  Although  they 
work  merely  with  their  eyes  upon  Nature,  and  he  works 


54  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

in  and  with  her,  his  aim  is  tlie  same  as  theirs — to  reunite 
her  scattered  excellences.  Theoretically  he  could  copy 
her  in  a  very  exact  sense  of  the  word ;  but  practically 
he  can  copy  little  more  than  her  minor  details  and  her 
exquisite  finish  of  execution.  Composition  of  one  sort 
or  another  is  the  chief  thing  in  art,  and  the  landscape- 
gardcner'«  compositions  must  be  his  own.  Through 
them  he  must  express  his  own  ideals.  If  he  is  Nature's 
pupil  he  is  also  her  master. 

"Nature,"  writes  Aristotle,  "has  the  will  but  not  the 
power  to  realize  perfection."  Turn  the  phrase  the 
other  w^ay  and  it  is  quite  as  true :  she  has  the  power  but 
not  the  will.  In  either  reading  it  means  that  man  can 
aid  and  supplement  her  work.  The  landscape-gardener 
can  bend  her  will  in  many  ways  to  his  own,  although  he 
must  have  learned  from  her  how  to  do  it.  He  cannot 
achieve  things  to  which  her  power  is  unequal,  but  he 
can  liberate,  assist,  and  direct  that  power.  He  could 
even  remove  her  mountains  if  the  result  were  worth  the 
effort ;  and  he  can  blot  them  out  of  his  landscape  by  the 
simplest  of  devices — ^by  planting  a  clump  of  trees  and 
shrubs  which  she  will  grow  for  him  as  cheerfully  as 
though  she  herself  had  sown  their  seeds.  He  cannot 
make  great  rivers ;  but  he  can  make  lakes  from  rivulets 
and  cause  water  to  dominate  in  a  view  which  Nature 
has  spread  "with  green  grass.  He  can  even  teach  her 
to  create  exquisite  details  scarcely  hinted  at  in  her 
unassisted  products.  All  "florists'  roses,"  for  example, 
are  not  beautiful ;  but  there  are  many  in  which  Nature 
herself  may  grudge  man's  skill  its  major  share.  In  short, 
the  landscape-gardener's  task  is  to  produce  beautiful 
pictures.     Nature  supplies  him  with  his  materials,  al- 


THE  ART  OF  GARDENING  55 

ways  giving  him  vitality,  light,  atmosphere,  color,  and 
details,  and  often  lovely  or  imposing  forms  in  the  con- 
formation of  the  soil ;  and  she  will  see  to  the  thorough 
finishing  of  his  design.  But  the  design  is  the  main  thing, 
and  the  design  must  be  of  his  OAvn  conceiving. 

It  is  easy  to  see  that  this  is  true  when  formal, 
"architectural"  garden-designing  is  in  question.  But 
it  is  just  as  true  of  naturalistic  landscape-work. 
Nature  seldom  shows  a  large  composition  which  an 
artist  would  wish  to  reproduce ;  and  if  by  chance  s'he 
does,  it  is  impossible  for  him  to  reproduce  it.  Practical 
difficulties  hedge  him  narrowly  in,  and  appropriateness 
controls  his  efforts  even  more  imperiously  than  those  of 
other  artists.  His  aim  is  never  purely  ideal;  he  can 
never  think  of  beauty  or  even  of  fitness,  in  the  abstract. 
He  may  practise  with  abstract  problems  on  paper,  but 
with  eac'h  piece  of  his  actual  work  Nature  sa js  to  him : 
"Here  in  this  spot  I  have  dra^vn  a  rough  outline  which 
it  is  for  you  to  make  into  a  picture.  In  many  other 
spots  I  have  shown  you  scattered  beauties  of  a  thousand 
kinds.  It  is  for  you  to  decide  which  you  can  bring  into 
your  work,  and  to  discover  how  they  may  be  fused  into 
a  whole  which  shall  look  as  beautiful,  as  right,  as  though 
I  had  created  it  myself."  Appropriateness  must  be  the 
touchstone  for  particular  features  as  for  general  effects. 
The  artist's  memory  may  be  stored  with  endless  beau- 
ties— ^with  innumerable  "bits"  of  composition  and  good 
ideas  for  foregrounds,  middle  distances,  and  back- 
grounds, and  with  exhaustless  materials  in  the  way  of 
trees  and  shrubs  and  flowers.  But  not  one  of  these  can 
be  used  until  he  has  considered  whether  it  will  be 
theoretically  appropriate  in  this  part  of  the  world,  in 


56  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

a  scheme  of  this  special  sort,  and  whether,  if  it  is,  prac- 
tical considerations  will  permit  its  use. 

Indeed,  the  true  process  for  landscape-work  is  more 
imaginative  than  this.  The  true  artist  will  not  go  about 
with  a  store  of  ready-made  features  and  effects  in  his 
mind,  and  strive  to  fit  some  of  them  into  the  task  of  the 
moment  as  best  he  may.  He  will  conceive  his  general 
idea  in  deference  to  the  local  commands  of  Nature ; 
develop  his  general  scheme  as  artistic  fitness  counsels ; 
discover  the  special  features  which  are  needed  to  com- 
plete it  (considering  which  Nature  will  permit  among 
those  he  might  desire)  ;  and  then,  half  unconsciously 
perhaps,  search  for  memories  of  natural  results  which 
may  teach  him  how  to  achieve  his  own.  In  educating 
himself  he  will  have  tried  less  to  remember  definitely 
this  and  that  particular  natural  result  than  to  under- 
stand how  Nature  goes  to  work  to  produce  beautiful 
results.  He  will  have  tried  to  permeate  himself  with  her 
spirit,  to  comprehend  her  aims,  to  learn  what  she  means 
by  variety  in  unity,  by  effective  simplicity,  by  harmo- 
nious contrasts,  by  fitness  of  feature  and  detail,  by 
beauty  of  line  and  color,  by  distinctness  of  expression 
— in  a  word,  by  composition.  He  will  have  tried  to 
train  his  memory  for  general  rather  than  for  particular 
truths,  and  chiefly  to  purify  his  taste  and  stimulate  his 
imagination ;  for  he  will  have  known  that  while,  in  some 
ways,  he  is  Nature's  favorite  pupil,  in  others  she  treats 
him  more  parsimoniously  than  the  rest.  She  gives  him 
a  superabundance  of  models  by  the  study  of  which  he 
may  make  himself  an  artist ;  but  when,  as  an  artist,  he 
is  actually  at  work,  she  will  never  give  him  one  pattern 
which,  part  by  part,  can  guide  his  efforts.     When  we 


THE  ART  OF  GARDENING  57 

read  of  painters,  we  marvel  most,  not  at  the  modern 
"realist"  working-  inch  by  inch  from  the  living  form,  but 
at  Michael  Angelo  on  his  lonely  scaffold,  filling  his  ceil- 
ing with  forms  more  powerful  and  superb  than  Nature's 
— no  guides  at  hand  but  his  memory  of  the  very 
different  forms  he  had  studied  from  life,  and  his  own 
creative  thought.  Yet  something  like  this  is  what  the 
landscape-gardener  must  do  every  time  he  starts  a  piece 
of  work.  Certainly  not  each  of  his  tasks  is  as  difficult 
as  a  Sistine  ceiling,  but  each,  whether  small  or  great, 
must  be  approached  from  an  imaginative  standpoint. 

There  is  another  point  to  be  noted.  When  we  speak 
of  the  artist  as  taught  and  inspired  by  "natural"  scenes, 
we  are  apt  to  mean  all  those  which  have  not  been  modi- 
fied by  the  conscious  action  of  art.  We  recognize  a 
park-landscape  as  non-natural ;  but  those  rural  land- 
scapes in  cultivated  countries  from  which  the  designer 
of  a  park  draws  his  best  lessons  are  also  non-natural. 
"If,  in  the  idea  of  a  natural  state,"  says  an  old  English 
writer,  "we  included  ground  and  wood  and  water,  no 
spot  in  this  island  can  be  said  to  be  in  a  state  of  Nature. 

Wherever  cultivation  has  set  its  foot — where- 

ever  the  plough  and  spade  have  laid  fallow  the  soil — 
Nature  is  become  extinct." 

Extinct  is,  of  course,  too  strong  a  word  if  we  take 
it  in  its  full  significance.  But  it  is  not  too  strong  if 
we  understand  it  as  meaning  those  things  which  are 
most  important  to  the  landscape-gardener;  the  com- 
positions, the  broad  pictures,  of  Nature  have  been 
wiped  out  in  all  thickly  settled  countries.  The  effects 
we  see  may  not  be  artistic  effects,  may  not  have  resulted 
from  a  conscious  effort  after  beauty ;  but  they  are  none 


58  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

the  less  artificial.  They  do  not  sho'wr  us  what  Nature 
wants  to  do  or  can  do,  but  What  man  and  Nature  liave 
chanced  to  do  together.  When  English  artists  became 
dissatisfied  with  the  formal,  architectural  gardening  of 
the  seventeenth  century,  they  fondly  fancied  they  were 
learning  from  Nature  how  to  produce  those  aspects  of 
rural  freedom,  of  idyllic  repose,  of  seemingly  unstudied 
grace  and  charm  which  were  their  new  desire.  But  in 
reality  they  were  learning  from  the  face  of  a  country 
which  for  centuries  had  been  carefully  moulded,  tended, 
and  put  to  use  by  man.  In  some  of  its  parts  the  effects 
of  man's  presence  were  comparatively  inconspicuous. 
But  of  most  parts  it  could  be  said  that  for  ages  not  a 
stream  or  tree  or  blade  of  grass  had  existed  except  in 
answer  to  his  efforts,  or,  at  least,  in  consequence  of  his 
permission ;  and  it  was  these  parts,  and  not  the  wilder 
ones,  which  gave  most  assistance  to  the  landscape- 
gardener. 

Take,  for  example,  the  lawn,  which  is  so  essential  a 
feature  of  almost  every  naturalistic  gardening  design. 
It  is  not  true,  as  often  has  been  said,  that  Nature  never 
suggests  a  lawn.  But  it  is  true  that  she  did  not  suggest 
it  to  those  English  gardeners  who  developed  it  so  beau- 
tifully. They  were  inspired  by  the  artificially  formed 
meadow-lands  and  forest-glades  of  the  England  of  their 
time. 

Yet  all  the  semi-natural,  semi-artificial  beauty  of 
England  would  not  have  taught  them  how  to  make 
beautiful  parks  and  gardens  had  they  not  been  taught 
by  their  own  imagination  too.  What  they  wanted  to 
create  was  landscapes  which  should  charm  from  all 
points  of  view,  bear  close  as  well  as  distant  inspection. 


THE  ART  OF  GARDENING  59 

and  be  free  from  all  inharmonious  details ;  and,  more- 
over, landscapes  which  should  fitly  surround  the  homes 
of  men  and  accommodate  their  very  various  needs  and 
pleasures.  Such  landscapes  we  never  find  in  Nature, 
not  even  in  cultivated,  semi-artificial  Nature.  That  is, 
while  we  can  imagine  a  natural  spot  which  would  be  an 
appropriate  setting  for  a  hunter's  lodge  or  a  hermit's 
cell,  we  can  fancy  none  which  would  fittingly  encircle  a 
palace,  a  mansion,  or  even  a  modest  home  for  a  man 
with  civilized  habits  and  tastes.  Every  step  in  civiliza- 
tion is  a  step  away  from  that  wild  estate  which  alone  is 
truly  Nature;  and  the  further  away  we  get  from  it 
the  more  imagination  is  needed  to  bring  the  elements  of 
use  and  beauty  which  Nature  still  supplies  into  harmony 
with  those  which  man  has  developed.  li 

The  simplest  house  in  the  most  rural  situation  needs 
at  least  that  a  path  shall  be  carried  to  its  door ;  and  to 
do  as  much  as  cut  a  path  in  the  most  pleasing  possible 
way  needs  a  certain  ^amount  of  imagination,  of  art. 
How  much  more,  then,  is  imagination  needed  in  such  a 
task  as  the  laying-out  of  a  gi'eat  estate,  where  sub- 
ordinate buildings  must  be  grouped  around  the  chief 
one,  and  all  must  be  accommodated  to  the  unalterable, 
main,  natural  features  of  the  scene;  where  a  hundred 
minor  natural  features  must  be  harmoniously  disposed  ; 
where  convenient  courses  for  feet  and  wheels  must  be 
provided ;  where  gardens  and  orchards  must  be  supplied, 
water  must  be  made  at  once  useful  and  ornamental,  and 
every  plant,  whether  large  or  small,  must  be  beautiful 
in  the  sense  of  helping  the  beauty  of  the  general  effect  ? 
The  stronger  the  desire  to  make  so  artificial  a  com- 
position look  as  though  Nature  might  have  designed  it, 


60  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

the  more  intimate  must  be  the  artist's  sympathy  with 
her  aims  and  processes,  and  the  keener  his  eye  for  the 
special  opportunities  of  the  site  she  oifers ;  but,  also,  the 
greater  must  be  his  imaginative  power,  the  firmer  his 
grasp  on  the  principles  and  processes  of  art. 


VI 

CULTURE  AND  AGRICULTURE* 

F.  W.  Howe 

There  was  a  time — not  very  long  ago — when  a 
respectable  number  of  persons  who  considered  them- 
selves well  educated  had  grave  doubts  wliether  culture 
and  agriculture  were  not  mutually  exclusive  terms, 
persons  who  did  not  believe  that  the  ordinary  farmer 
might  rationally  be  considered  a  man  of  culture,  or 
perhaps  even  capable  of  culture.  Indeed,  it  may  be 
questioned  whether  this  point  of  view  was  not  quite 
generally  entertained  "among  our  best  people."  Ac- 
cording to  this  philosophy  the  only  hope  for  the  farmer 
to  acquire  culture  lay  in  the  possibility  that  he  might 
somehow  rise  superior  to  the  natural  limitations  of  his 
daily  work,  and  scl>ool  his  mind  to  the  contemplation 
of  the  nobler  things  of  literature,  history,  and  art.  The 
study  of  beet  roots  had  not  cultural  value  to  be  com- 
pare with  the  study  of  Greek  roots,  nor  alfalfa  stems 
with  Latin  stems. 

This  type  of  thought  affected  even  some  of  those  who 
gained  their  living  from  the  farm,  but  inherited  their 
educational  ideals  from  the  past.  It  is  noteworthy  even 
yet  that  the  state  colleges  of  agriculture  in  the  South 
and  East  have  generally  emphasized  the  study  of  some 
foreign  language,  particularly  Latin,   as  a  necessary 

*  From  The  Cornell  Countryman  by  permission. 

61 


62  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTUHE 

condition  or  accompaniment  of  the  study  of  agriculture, 
in  order  to  insure  their  students  at  least  a  fraction  of 
the  "culture"  they  might  secure  in  attending  other  col- 
leges and  universities.  This  notion  of  the  special  virtue 
of  foreign  language  study  has  been  generally  less 
emphasized  in  the  agricultural  colleges  of  the  Northern 
and  Western  states ;  but  quite  generally  over  the  coun- 
try as  a  whole,  practical  assent  has  been  given  to  the 
view  that  the  land-grant  colleges  exist  for  the  benefit 
of  the  sons  and  daughters  of  farmers  who  could  not 
afford  to  pay  the  cost  of  attendance  at  other  colleges 
or  universities,  or  who  might  feel  socially  out  of  place 
in  these  institutions,  or  who  might  not  be  able  to  meet 
the  s<iholastic  requirements  of  entrance  in  these  other 
schools. 

Possibly  it  was  to  remove  this  last  suspicion  and  to 
reaffirm  the  cultural  capacity  of  farmers'  children,  even 
when  measured  by  the  older  scholastic  standards,  that 
later  on  it  became  the  fashion  to  include  a  foreign 
language  in  the  entrance  requirements  of  state  colleges 
of  agriculture,  especially  when  connected  with  older 
universities.  Possibly  also  a  consideration  of  equity 
was  involved  in  this  later  fasihion.  If  the  state  is  to 
furnish  free  tuition  in  agriculture,  but  does  not  allow 
free  tuition  in  all  other  college  courses,  perhaps  it  must 
justify  this  policy  by  imposing  a  kind  of  "culture" 
handicap  upon  the  student  of  agriculture  by  requiring 
him  to  study  some  foreign  language  as  a  condition  of 
being  allowed  to  study  agriculture  at  state  expense.  In 
other  words,  we  may  coax  him  or  compel  him  to  acquire 
culture  by  studying  the  necessary  cultural  subjects 
before,  or  along  with,  his  study  of  agriculture,  if  the 


CULTURE  AND  AGRICULTURE  63 

agricultural  subjects  themselves  are  not  cultural  enough 
to  develop  sufficient  culture  to  satisfy  the  claims  of 
citizenship. 

But  suppose  this  requirement  turns  out  to  be  a  real 
handicap  in  securing  the  special  type  of  training  for 
which  the  agricultural  college  was  established?  What 
shall  we  say  of  the  boy  or  girl  who  studies  agriculture 
eagerly  in  the  high  school,  but  who  does  not  care  for 
or  succeed  in  the  study  of  the  foreign  languages?  Shall 
the  state  deny  him  the  privilege  of  getting  such  culture 
and  honor  as  he  can  by  graduation  from  the  college  of 
agriculture?  Does  the  land-grant  college  of  agriculture 
exist  for  the  conferring  of  culture  upon  its  students? 
And  is  culture  the  necessary  product  of  foreign 
language  study?  Or  is  preparation  and  purpose  for 
usefulness  to  be  considered  equal  to  if  not  identical  with 
real  culture? 

But  there  may  be  some  reasonable  difference  of 
opinion  as  to  the  meaning  of  "culture,"  perhaps  even 
when  it  is  spelled  with  a  K  and  enforced  with  the  sword 
and  the  submarine.  But  wihen  we  attempt  exact  defini- 
tion, it  seems  well  to  say  that  real  cultui'e  may  be 
defined  negatively  much  more  easily  than  positively. 
We  seem  instinctively  to  knoAV  what  it  is  not  v/ithout 
being  satisfactorily  able  to  say  what  it  is. 

For  example,  I  care  not  how  well  schooled  a  man 
may  be,  I  know  that  he  is  not  cultured  when  I  hear  him 
swear  or  see  him  smoke  in  the  presence  of  either  women 
or  men  who  object  to  this  infringement  of  their  own 
rights.  If  acts  like  these  are  compatible  with  culture, 
then  we  either  miss  little  in  not  having  it,  or  else  we  must 
admit  that  its  champions  experience  occasional  lapses 


64  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

from  their  allegiance.  On  the  other  hand,  a  man  may 
do  some  things  that  are  forbidden  by  the  code  of  the 
ultra-cultured  without  actually  losing  his  claim  to 
gentility.  I  have  heard  of  a  scientific  type  of  agricul- 
ture that  proposes  to  produce  peas  that  are  flat  on 
one  side  so  that  they  wiU  not  roll  off  a  table  knife. 
And  I  presume  this  whimsical  proposition  is  accepted 
in  some  quarters  as  sufficient  evidence  of  the  irrepress- 
ible conflict  between  culture  and  agriculture.  But 
conceivably  a  man  might  even  eat  peas  or  pie  with  a 
knife  and  be  a  gentleman  still  if  he  absolutely  had  no 
fork  or  spoon  to  save  him  from  starvation.  And  so  a 
man  may  keep  his  seat  in  a  car  while  women  are  stand- 
ing and  yet  be  a  cultured  gentleman — 'for  he  might  be 
sitting  on  the  window-sill  or  the  hand-rail  or  on  another 
man's  lap ;  or  he  might  have  much  further  to  ride  than 
the  lady ;  or  he  might  be  wearied  with  a  long  day's 
work  and  have  a  mile  or  two  to  walk  after  leaving  the 
car,  while  she  has  just  stepped  out  of  an  easy  chair  at 
home ;  or,  yet  again,  he  mig-ht  be  ill  and  unable  to  stand ; 
or  perchance  he  might  be  reading  behind  a  paper  and 
never  see  her  at  all !  And  so  a  gentleman's  seat  is  to  be 
held  or  surrendered  according  to  the  special  circum- 
stances of  each  case.  The  lady  herself  is  noit  truly 
cultured  who  expects  a  man  to  act  invariably  according 
to  a  fixed  prescription  regardless  of  conditions. 

The  essence  of  culture  is  considerateness.  Culture  is 
not  to  be  learned  by  memorizing  books  on  etiquette.  It 
is  not  a  slavish  following  of  rules,  nor  the  ability  to 
repeat  formulas  or  pronounce  big  words  or  interpret 
dark  sentences.  Culture  is  not  anything  that  must  be 
learned   from  books   or  by   intimate   association   with 


CULTURE  AND  AGRICULTURE  65 

select  persons  or  through  imitation  of  distinguished 
models  of  excellence.  Culture  is  not  anything  that  can 
be  positively  guaranteed  as  the  result  of  pursuing  a 
prescribed  course  of  study.  No  student  can  say,  "These 
and  these  subjects  I  shall  put  into  my  program,  and 
when  I  have  finished  I  shall  be  a  man  of  culture." 

Lest  these  views  shall  be  regarded  as  merely  the  pro- 
nouncements of  personal  opinion,  let  me  support  them 
with  the  statements  of  a  few  educators  who  will  be 
accepted  as  good  authority.  President  A.  Ross  Hill, 
of  the  University  of  Missouri,  says : 

Culture  is  not  inherent  in  particular  forms  of  subject-matter, 
but  is  a  by-product  of  the  educational  process,  and  represents  an 
attitude  of  mind  and  life  rather  than  a  particular  kind  of 
knowledge. 

And  in  similar  language  speaks  President  R.  C.  Mc- 
Laurin,  of  the  Massachusetts  Institute  of  Technology : 

Some  speak  as  if  the  test  of  culture  were  the  knowledge  of 
Latin,  or  Greek,  or  of  French  literature,  or  of  Italian  painting,  or 
of  what  not.  As  a  matter  of  fact  it  is  none  of  these  things,  for 
I  take  it  that  the  root  of  culture  in  any  worthy  sense  is  the 
possession  of  an  ideal  that  is  broad  enough  to  form  the  basis  of 
a  sane  criticism  of  life. 

Let  me  add  to  tbese  words  a  statement  by  Professor 
W.  H.  Heck,  author  of  "Mental  Discipline  and  Educa- 
tional Values": 

It  is  a  sad  commentary  upon  our  educational  abstractness  that 
we  often  fail  to  realize  the  high  and  noble  inclusiveness  of  the  ideal 
of  use  in  our  preparation  of  girls  and  boys  for  efficiency  and 
service  in  society.  We  sometimes  run  away  from  the  real  test  of 
real  things  and  cry  out  for  culture,  as  if  culture  had  any  meaning 
apart  from  its  use  in  adjustment. 

Again,  Professor  John  Dewey,  of  Columbia  Uni- 
versity : 

The  assumption  that  a  training  is  good  in  general  just  in  the 
degree  in  which  it  is  good  for  nothing  in  particular,  is  one  for 


66  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

which  it  would  be  difficult  to  find  any  adequate  philosophical 
ground.  Training,  discipline,  must  finally  be  measured  in  terms 
of  application,  of  availability.  To  be  trained  is  to  be  trained  to 
something  and  for  something. 

Finally  let  me  remind  you  of  these  words  fram  the 
late  Commissioner  Draper,  then  President  of  the  Uni- 
versity of  the  State  of  New  York : 

New  York  will  never  relax  her  grasp  upon  the  things  which 
culture  the  minds  and  souls  of  men,  but  it  is  to  be  hoped  that  she 
will  realize  better  than  she  has  that  the  finest  and  deepest  culture 
comes  through  work;  that  work  by  the  hand  and  by  the  head  are 
yoke-fellows  in  our  free  civilization,  and  that  both  the  rights  and 
the  prosperity  of  her  people  hinge  upon  the  professional  and 
industrial  equilibrium  of  her  tax-supported  education. 

There  is  a  hint  in  these  last  words  that  we  may  even 
professionalize  the  technical  subjects  in  our  agricultural 
colleges  to  the  extent  that  we  almost  entirely  obscure  or 
ignore  their  industrial  application.  We  may  so  sub- 
divide and  elaborate  our  courses  of  study  that  no  ordi- 
nary istudent  can  in  four  years  compass  enough  of  them 
to  equip  himself  for  practical  efficiency  on  the  farm. 
Indeed,  this  is  the  criticism  most  often  directed  against 
the  agricultural  college.  Are  we,  perhaps,  getting  so 
much  of  culture  that  we  are  falling  short  in  our  agri- 
culture.'' Is  it  a  fact  that  our  acres  are  becoming  so 
productive  under  scientific  management  that  we  need 
have  no  concern  for  our  future  food  supply?  Under 
the  leadership  of  the  colleges  are  our  farmers  becoming 
so  efficient  that  fewer  and  fewer  will  need  to  stay  on  the 
farm.''  If  this  be  so,  do  we  need  to  train  more  and  more 
leaders  in  agriculture  to  direct  these  few,  or  are  the 
colleges  of  agriculture  devoting  themselves  to  the  train- 
ing of  leaders  for  city  life.'' 

It  seems  to  be  true  that  the  more  freely  the  college 
student  of  agriculture  is  turned  loose  in  the  field  of 


CULTURE  AND  AGRICULTURE  67 

specialization,  the  less  frequently  does  he  return  to 
practical  agricultural  pursuits.  It  is  the  admitted  aim 
of  some  state  agricultural  colleges,  if  not  the  ambition 
of  all,  to  train  their  graduates  mostly  to  be  "leaders" 
rather  than  practical  farmers ;  but  it  is  certain  that  we 
must  be  approaching  a  condition  of  equilibrium.  The 
movement  of  young  men  from  country  to  city  cannot  go 
on  indefinitely  and  yet  it  is  necessary  to  train  in  the 
colleges  an  increasing  number  of  highly  specialized 
agricultural  leaders.  We  shall  soon  need  to  cultivate 
some  people  on  the  farms  who  are  willing  to  be  led. 
Some  of  these  leaders  must  actually  establish  them- 
selves on  farms  and  demonstrate  their  ability  to  lead 
and  be  led  by  their  college  training. 

If  you  ask  me  whether  we  have  been  getting  too  much 
culture  and  too  little  practical  agriculture  in  the  col- 
leges, my  answer  is,  we  have  been  getting  too  little  cul- 
ture out  of  our  practical  agriculture  on  the  farms.  We 
have  overlooked  or  disregarded  the  culture  obtainable 
directly  from  agriculture.  We  need  more  men  educated 
in  scientific  agriculture  who  believe  in  the  cultural  pos- 
sibilities of  farm  life,  and  who  are  practically  willing  to 
live  in  the  country  and  demonstrate  to  their  neighbors 
the  practicability  of  the  culture  they  have  received  in 
the  college,  and  thus  to  elevate  the  common  life  of  their 
own  community. 

Too  many  young  men  from  the  towns  and  cities  are 
studying  agriculture  as  a  profession  rather  than  as  an 
occupation.  They  intend  to  be  "gentlemen  farmers," 
but  do  not  intend  to  work  much  with  their  own  hands. 
They  expect  to  "make  money"  on  the  farm  by  using 
their    father's    city-earned    capital,    but    they    do   not 


68  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTIHIE 

usually  expect  to  associate  with  their  country  neigh- 
bors and  build  up  the  social  and  religious  life  of  the 
neighborhood.  So  strong  seems  this  tendency  of  city 
boys  to  use  their  study  of  agriculture  as  a  means  of 
personal  profit  rather  than  community  betterment,  that 
colleges  of  agriculture  are  coming  to  be  crowded  with 
them.  And  the  inducement  of  free  tuition  offered  by  the 
state  also  attracts  many  others  who  have  no  vital,  per- 
sonal interest  in  farming  itself,  but  merely  utilize  the 
college  of  agriculture  as  a  means  of  securing  a  good 
scientific  and  social  training  that  can  be  profitably 
turned  to  other  occupations. 

The  state  normal  schools  require  prospective  students 
to  subscribe  to  some  sort  of  declaration  that  they  intend 
to  use  their  training  for  tea'ching  in  the  public  schools. 
A  similar  declaration  from  every  student  of  agriculture 
in  a  tax-supported  college  of  his  intention  to  devote  his 
training  to  practical  agriculture,  or  to  research  or 
teaching  in  furthering  the  practice  of  agriculture, 
would  probably  test  the  elasticity  of  some  consciences. 
If  the  requirement  of  two  or  three  years  in  a  foreign 
language  is  intended  to  discourage  such  students  from 
rushing  into  agriculture,  I  submit  that  it  is  a  require- 
ment that  can  be  mu'ch  more  easily  prepared  for  in  the 
city  schools  than  in  the  country,  that  it  is  more 
naturally  related  to  the  city  boy's  mind  and  environ- 
ment, 'and  that  as  a  deterrent  from  agricultural  study 
it  is  much  less  effective  than  a  requirement  of  one  year's 
practical  experience  on  the  farm  would  be. 

There  can  be  no  question  that  a  year's  work  on  a  farm 
would  disclose  the  city  boy's  fitness  to  study  agriculture 
much  more  positively  than  the  ability  to  read  a  selected 


CULTURE  AND  AGRICULTURE  69 

chapter  in  Caesar.  In  fact,  to  insure  that  the  city  boy 
has  at  least  a  fair  understanding  of  what  agriculture  is 
and  means,  and  that  lie  has  a  mental  and  moral  attitude 
toward  it  that  implies  at  least  some  partial  return  to 
the  state  for  his  free  tuition,  it  would  seem  a  fair  re- 
quirement that  every  city  boy  should  have  the  experi- 
ence of  working  for  a  whole  year  on  a  good  farm  before 
he  presents  himself  for  entrance  at  a  college  of  agri- 
culture. It  seems  unfair  to  the  boy  himself  either  to 
take  his  money  for  tuition  or  to  tempt  him  by  free 
tuition  to  enter  upon  a  four-year  agricultural  course 
without  an  adequate  preliminary  conception  of  what  a 
course  in  agriculture  ought  to  mean. 

The  old  conception  of  culture  doubtless  grew  out  of 
tlie  ambitious  tendency  of  the  lower  order  of  society  to 
ape  the  manners  and  accomplishments  of  the  higher. 
In  medieval  times  the  priest  and  the  monk  must  know 
Latin  in  order  to  read  the  Scriptures  and  officiate  in 
the  rites  of  the  Church.  The  peasant  boy  who  aspired  to 
the  service  of  the  Church  looked  forward  to  the  mastery 
of  Latin  as  a  vocational  requirement ;  it  was  to  be  used 
in  his  calling.  But  to  the  humbler  members  of  his 
family  his  attainment  in  the  use  of  an  unknovm  tongue 
became  the  proof  of  superior  refinement  and  culture. 
Likewise  the  English  peasant  lad  or  lass  who  was 
fortunate  enough  to  become  connected  with  the  retinue 
of  a  nobleman  must  learn  French  in  order  to  qualify 
himself  for  promotion  to  higher  circles  of  influence. 
And  so  with  the  study  of  mathemiatics  as  a  prerequisite 
for  the  ancient  pursuit  of  astronomy.  In  short,  all  the 
educational  subjects  that  have  attained  high  esteem  for 
their  cultural  value  were  first  courted  because  of  their 


70  ESSAY'S  ON  AGRICULTURE 

vocational  value,  as  means  to  the  better  performance  of 
some  social  or  professional  duty.  The  point  I  wish  to 
urge  here  is  that  Latin  still  had  cultural  value  for  the 
priest  who  used  it  in  his  service ;  it  did  not  become  cul- 
tural by  becoming  useless.  And  if  this  be  true,  then 
every  useful  subject  of  study  may  become  a  means  of 
culture  for  the  actual  user,  and  in  a  secondary  sense  it 
may  also  become  passively  cultural  for  the  one  who 
studies  it  merely  for  general  information  without  ex- 
pecting, primarily,  to  put  it  to  the  test  of  use.  We  must 
agree  to  this  point  of  view  unless  we  are  to  admit  that 
culture  invariably  results  from  the  study  of  that  which 
is  fundamentally  useless. 

What,  then,  are  the  possibilities  of  culture  in  relation 
to  agriculture?  My  conviction  is  that,  regardless  of 
whether  a  man  has  studied  Latin  or  German,  regardless 
of  whether  he  now  eats  peas  with  a  knife  or  a  fork,  re- 
gardless of  whether  he  is  the  graduate  of  a  college  of 
agriculture  or  a  college  of  liberal  arts,  or  of  none,  if  he 
is  a  real  farmer  he  can  unconsciously  acquire  genuine 
culture  of  mind  and  soul  in  the  routine  practice  of  his 
daily  occupation. 

No  other  occupation  compares  with  modern  farming 
in  the  opportunity  it  offers  for  constant  mental  pro- 
gression, if  one  has  the  native  appetite  for  progress.  If 
one  has  it  not,  or  if  it  has  not  yet  been  awakened  in  the 
soul,  then  no  study  of  French  or  music,  art  or  esthetics, 
mathematics  or  metaphysics  can  make  him  a  cultured 
man  or  woman.  Lincoln  found  culture  in  a  log  cabin 
with  two  or  three  books  and  his  own  thoughts. 

Wealth  and  ease  of  life  are  not  the  necessary  con- 
ditions of  culture.    It  cannot  be  bought  with  a  price  or 


CULTURE  AND  AGRICULTURE  71 

put  on  like  a  garment.  Pianos  and  fox  trots,  vic- 
trolas  land  super-sixes,  do  not  bring  culture  into  coun- 
try homes.  It  must  begin  on  the  inside  of  the  personal 
and  family  life  and  blossom  in  words  and  acts  that  dis- 
close superior  character.  And  no  other  type  of  life  is 
more  favorable  to  the  development  of  worthy  character 
than  is  the  work  of  the  farm.  The  farmer  needs  only 
the  vision  of  reality,  of  seeing  the  invisible  in  the  visible, 
to  appreciate  the  essential  sacredness  of  the  things  with 
which  he  deals.  He  is  the  chief  producer  of  mankind's 
daily  food,  the  hand  that  feeds  the  world.  If  the  under- 
standing and  contemplation  of  this  fact  do  not  bring  a 
sense  of  the  responsibility  and  dignity  of  his  service, 
then  we  have  much  yet  to  pray  for. 

The  hope  of  a  wholesome  American  life  lies  in  the 
prospect  that  our  farmers  may  come  not  only  to  the 
full  appreciation  and  discharge  of  their  duty  as  pro- 
ducers but  also  to  the  realization  of  the  full  possibilities 
of  personal  culture  which  farming  should  afford.  The 
burden  of  our  teaching  hitherto  and  the  aim  of  most 
government  activity  in  the  farmer's  behalf  has  been  to 
show  him  how  to  produce  more  bushels  and  tons  per 
acre ;  but  he  knows  now  how  to  produce  more  than  it  is 
commonly  profitable  for  him  to  produce.  He  does  not 
wish  now  to  'be  shown  how  he  can  live  on  twenty-five 
cents  a  day  so  much  as  to  be  shown  how  his  income  will 
enable  him  to  live  as  well  as  he  ought  to.  He  is  not 
satisfied  with  the  mode  and  scale  of  living  nor  with  the 
hours  of  labor  that  satisfied  his  grandfather.  He  wants 
more  of  the  joy  of  living.  If  he  was  to  be  kept  con- 
tented with  the  peasant's  lot  his  larger  education 
should  never  have  been  started  by  the  state.    Education 


72  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTUKE 

is  ever  a  disturber  of  the  peace  that  sleeps  in  serfdom. 
Instil  in  man  the  taste  of  knowledge  and  you  awaken  a 
troop  of  energies  that  will  scale  the  heights  of  culture. 
What  has  agricultural  learning  done  to  quicken  these 
springs  of  self -development.''  Possibly  not  so  much  as 
we  could  wish  for  the  adult  and  aged  members  of  the 
farm  home,  these  survivors  from  the  day  when  agri- 
culture was  not  taught  in  the  common  schools.  But 
what  of  the  farm  boy  and  girl  of  to-day?  The  study  of 
useful  plants,  birds,  and  animals,  that  constitutes  an 
important  part  of  all  real  farm  work,  is  the  most 
helpful  sort  of  nature  study.  Companionship  with 
father  and  mother  as  well  as  with  brothers  and  sisters 
in  doing  the  work  of  the  farm  is  a  kind  of  education 
greatly  needed  in  our  day.  The  city  boy  and  girl  often 
go  astray  because  they  are  so  constantly  associated 
only  with  those  of  their  own  inexperienced  age  when  out- 
side the  schoolroom.  The  child  of  the  farm  is  about  the 
only  one  who  has  a  fair  chance  to  develop  a  normal 
human  life.  He  learns  responsibility  for  his  own  share 
of  chores  and  harder  work.  He  learns  the  value  of 
money,  of  work,  of  time,  and  of  recreation.  He  learns 
the  meaning  of  duty  that  must  be  done  at  the  right  time, 
and  the  joy  of  rest  after  work.  He  can  sleep  and  enjoy 
wholesome  food  and  he  rarely  calls  a  doctor.  He  knows 
the  difference  between  the  size  of  a  rabbit  and  the  size  of 
a  cow  though  both  pictures  may  occupy  equal  space  in 
the  book.  He  knows  that  milk  does  not  originally  come 
out  of  a  bottle.  He  doesn't  have  to  "keep  off  the  grass." 
He  has  a  thousand  sources  of  information  and  delight 
that  come  only  on  occasions  to  the  city  boy.  All  these 
conditions  tend  to  develop  a  breadth  of  mind  and  a 


CULTURE  AND  AGRICULTURE  73 

sturdy  resourcefulness  that  is  the  best  possible  prepa- 
ration for  usefulness  in  later  life. 

Some  city  people  haA^e  worried  much  over  the  effect 
of  isolation  on  the  culture  of  the  rural  home.  It  may 
in  fact  be  considered  an  advantage  rather  than  a  disad- 
vantage. It  is  true  that  a  certain  degree  of  isolation  is 
characteristic  of  all  farms  that  are  large  enough  to  be 
profitable.  For  normal  social  development  the  farmer's 
family  must  therefore  be  able  in  a  large  degree  to  enter- 
tain themselves  at  home.  The  man  or  woman  who  must 
always  be  making  or  returning  calls,  or  attending 
"parties"  will  have  to  develop  a  more  conservative 
social  habit  if  he  gives  needed  time,  energy,  and  thought 
to  making  his  farm  business  successful.  One  of  the 
great  moral  advantages  of  country  life  is  that  it  tends 
to  develop  the  habit  of  meditation  while  at  work.  A 
good  countryman  must  be  "good  company"  for  himself 
and  his  own  family.  His  personality  must  be  of  a  high 
type.  As  Warren  put  it  in  relation  to  dairying,  "No 
one  can  produce  clean  milk  who  does  not  have  a  clean 
body  and  a  clean  mind."  As  a  matter  of  social  fact, 
there  is  often  more  of  real,  helpful  friendship  between 
farm  families  who  live  two  or  three  miles  apart  than 
exists  between  those  living  on  adjacent  city  lots.  A 
certain  degree  of  seclusion  is  good  for  every  family  that 
is  not  dependent  on  neighbors  for  inspiration  in  its  own 
home  life. 

I  have  already  alluded  to  the  teaching  of  agriculture 
in  the  rural  school.  We  are  passing  the  day  when  the 
country  school  and  its  teacher  drew  all  their  inspiration 
from  +he  activities  of  urban  life.  And  I  hope  we  are 
passing  the  day  when  the  rural  church  and  its  pastor 


74  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

drew  inspiration  chiefly  from  the  same  source.  The 
rural  school  that  does  not  use  its  natural  environment 
as  subject  matter  and  illustration  for  teaching  does 
not  encourage  boys  and  girls  to  stay  on  the  farm.  And 
the  rural  church  whose  pastor  never  preaches  in  terms 
of  country  life,  and  whose  congregation  never  interests 
itself  in  community  betterment,  does  not  perform  its 
full  duty  to  the  state  which  exempts  its  property  from 
taxation.  If  the  church  is  merely  an  exclusive  social 
club,  its  property  should  be  taxed  like  that  of  any  other 
private  club.  The  church  particularly,  because  it  is  not 
supported  by  taxation,  can  never  thrive  in  an  unpros- 
perous  farming  community.  For  its  own  preservation 
it  must  recognize  the  obligation  to  do  its  share  in 
promoting  the  economic  welfare  of  its  neighborhood. 
The  rural  preacher  should  know  at  least  enough  about 
farming  to  interest  farmers  themselves  in  the  agriculture 
of  the  Bible  as  a  means  of  teaching  religious  truth. 
One  of  the  highest  possibilities  of  country  life  is  dis- 
closed in  the  natural  relationship  between  good  preach- 
ing and  good  farming.  This  relationship  is  more  than 
economic,  but  it  grows  out  of  consistent  economic  views 
and  principles. 

If  this  discussion  has  wandered  far  afield,  let  us  now, 
in  conclusion,  return  like  the  preacher  to  his  text. 
Culture  and  Agriculture  are  not  opposing  terms.  We 
are  to  believe  and  learn  that  agriculture  needs  no 
importation  of  goods  from  any  other  realm  to  provide 
food  for  the  care  and  culture  of  men.  As  the  fields  of 
the  earth  bring  forth  all  manner  of  fruits  for  the 
sustenance  of  the  physical  life,  so  also  does  their  culti- 
vation afford  stimulus  and  direction  to  the  mental  and 


CULTURE  AND  AGRICULTURE  75 

moral  life.  For  no  one  can  be  a  successful  husbandman 
who  does  not  follow  the  law  of  Nature,  which  is  the  law 
of  God.  "The  Holy  Earth"  is  the  source  of  thoughts 
that  reach  to  the  Infinite,  if  we  listen  to  her  teaching. 

Culture  is  the  product  of  thoughtfulness,  the  under- 
standing of  facts,  the  appreciation  of  truth.  If  it  be 
said  that  culture  involves  the  love  of  poetry,  all  nature 
is  a  poem.  If  it  includes  a  mastery  of  science,  the 
farmer  must  be  the  broadest  scientist.  If  it  calls  for 
statesmanship,  farming  itself  is  the  foundation  of  the 
state.  If  it  demands  devotion  to  the  arts,  the  husband- 
man is  the  keenest  craftsman  of  them  all.  And  if  it 
requires  creative  genius  to  geherate  culture,  the  master 
of  the  farm  is  himself  a  creator  of  value,  of  beauty,  of 
influence,  and  of  new  knowledge  for  the  world's 
instruction. 

If  the  farmer  of  to-day  is  not  living  up  to  the  cultural 
possibilities  inherent  in  his  calling,  it  is  because  he  is 
deaf  and  blind  to  spiritual  invitations  that  solicit  him 
to  the  mastery  of  forces  that  have  produced  the 
miracles  and  the  wisdom  of  the  ages.  For  most  of  us 
culture  must  take  root  in  vocation,  it  cannot  be  brought 
from  afar.  But  he  who  holds  the  plow  may  yet  look  off 
and  look  up.  His  mind  may  be  busy  with  the  conquest 
of  the  world.  There  is  no  enmity  between  culture  and 
agriculture. 


THE  FARMER  OF  THE  PRESENT 


VII 

THE  FARMER:    THE  CORNER-STONE  OF 
CIVILIZATION  * 

Theodore  Roosevelt 

Recently  an  Indiana  woman  was  peeling  some 
potatoes,  and  in  a  hollow  in  one  she  found  a  note  from 
the  Southern  farmer  who  had  raised  the  potatoes 
running : 

"I  got  69c  a  busliel  for  these  potatoes.  How  much 
did  you  pay  for  them?'* 

She  wrote  back: 

"I  paid  $4  per  bushel." 

The  farmer  sent  her  just  one  more  letter.     It  said: 

"I  got  69c  for  these  potatoes.  It  could  not  have  cost 
more  than  31c  to  carry  them  to  you.  Who  got  the 
other  $3?     I  am  going  to  try  to  find  out." 

It  is  idle  to  say  that  when  such  an  occurrence  is 
typical — and  it  most  certainly  is  to  a  large  extent 
typical — ^there  is  no  cause  for  uneasiness.  Something 
is  wrong.  It  may  be  wholly  the  fault  of  outsiders.  It 
may  be  at  least  partially  the  fault  of  the  farmers  and 
of  those  who  eat  the  food  the  farmers  raise.  The  trouble 
may  be  so  deep-rooted  in  our  social  system  that  extreme 
caution  must  be  exercised  in  striving  for  betterment. 
But  one  thing  is  certain.     The  situation  is  not  satis- 

*  Prom  "The  Foes  of  Our  Own  Household,"  by  Theodora  RooseTelt. 
Copyright,  1917,  George  H.  Dora&  Co..  Publishers. 

79 


80  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

factory  and  calls  for  a  thoroughgoing  investigation, 
with  the  determination  to  make  whatever  changes, 
including  radical  changes,  are  necessary  in  order  once 
more  to  put  on  a  healthy  basis  the  oldest  and  most 
essential  of  all  occupations,  the  occupation  which  is  the 
foundation  of  all  others,  the  occupation  of  the  tiller  of 
the  soil,  of  the*  man  who  by  his  own  labor  raises  the  raw 
material  of  food  and  clothing,  without  which  the  whole 
fabric  of  the  most  gorgeous  civilization  will  topple  in 
a  week. 

We  cannot  permanently  shape  our  course  right  on 
any  international  issue  unless  we  s.re  sound  on  the 
domestic  issues ;  and  this  farm  movement  is  the  funda- 
mental social  issue — the  one  issue  which  is  even  more 
basic  than  the  relations  of  capitalist  and  workingman. 
The  farm  industry  cannot  stop ;  the  world  is  never 
more  than  a  year  from  starvation ;  this  great  war  has 
immensely  increased  the  cost  of  living  without  com- 
mensurately  improving  the  condition  of  the  men  who 
produce  the  things  on  which  we  live.  Even  in  this 
country  the  situation  has  become  grave. 

The  temporary  causes  of  this  situation  have  pro- 
duced such  effect  in  our  la»nd  only  because  they 
aggravated  conditions  due  to  fundamental  causes  which 
have  long  been  at  work.  These  fundamental  causes  may 
all  be  included  in  one :  the  farmer's  business  in  our  coun- 
try has  remained  almost  unchanged  during  the  century 
which  has  seen  every  other  business  change  in  profound 
and  radical  fashion.  He  still  works  by  methods 
belonging  to  the  day  of  the  stage-coach  and  the  horse 
canal^boat,  while  every  other  brain  or  hand  worker  in 
the  country  has  been  obliged  to  shape  his  methods  into 


THE  CORNER-STONE  OF  CIVILIZATION  81 

more  or  less  conformity  to  those  required  by  an  age  of 
steam  and  electricity. 

Our  commercial,  banking,  manufacturing,  and  trans- 
portation systems  have  been  built  up  with  a  rapidity 
never  before  approached.  We  have  accumulated  wealth 
at  an  unheard  of  rate.  There  has  been  grave  injustice 
in  the  distribution  of  the  wealth,  our  law-givers  having 
erred  both  by  wisdom  in  leaving  the  matter  alone,  and 
at  times  by  even  greater  imwisdom  when  they  interfered 
with  it.  But  on  the  whole  the  growth  and  prosperity 
have  been  enormous ;  and  yet  we  have  allowed  the  basic 
industry  of  farming,  the  industry  which  underlies  all 
economic  life,  to  drift  along  haphazard,  we  have  allowed 
the  life  of  the  dwellers  in  the  open  country  to  become 
more  and  more  meager,  and  their  methods  of  produc- 
tion and  of  marketing  to  remain  so  primitive  that  their 
soil  was  impoverished  and  their  profits  largely  usurped 
by  others. 

In  1880,  one  farmer  in  four  was  a  tenant ;  and  at  that 
time  the  tenant  was  still  generally  a  young  man  to  whom 
the  position  of  tenant  was  merely  an  intermediate  step 
between  that  of  farm  laborer  and  that  of  a  farm  owner. 
In  1910,  over  one  farmer  in  three  had  become  a  tenant ; 
and  nowadays  it  becomes  steadily  more  difficult  to  pass 
from  the  tenant  to  the  owner  stage.  If  the  process 
continues  unchecked,  half  a  century  hence  we  shall  have 
deliberately  permitted  ourselves  to  plunge  into  the  situ- 
ation which  brought  chaos  in  Ireland,  and  which  in 
England  resulted  in  the  complete  elimination  of  the  old 
yeomanry,  so  that  nearly  nine  tenths  of  English  farmers 
to-day  are  tenants  and  the  consequent  class  division  is 
most  ominous  for  the  future.    France  and  Germany  arc 


82  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

to-day  distinctly  better  off  than  we  are  in  this  respect ; 
and  in  New  Zealand,  where  there  is  an  excellent  system 
of  land  distribution,  only  one  seventh  of  the  farmers  are 
tenants. 

If  the  tendencies  that  have  produced  such  a  con- 
dition continue  to  work  unchecked  no  prophetic  power 
is  needed  to  foretell  disaster  to  the  nation.  Therefore, 
the  one  hopeless  attitude,  in  this  as  in  recent  inter- 
national matters,  is  "watchful  waiting,"  sitting  still 
and  doing  nothing  to  prepare  for  or  to  avert  disaster. 
It  is  far  'better  to  try  experiments,  even  when  we  are  not 
certain  how  these  experiments  will  turn  out,  or  when  we 
are  certain  that  the  proposed  plan  contains  elements  of 
folly  as  well  as  elements  of  wisdom.  Better  "trial  and 
error"  than  no  trial  at  all.  And  the  service  test,  the 
test  of  actual  experiment,  is  the  only  conclusive  test. 
It  is  only  the  attempt  in  actual  practice  to  realize  a 
realizable  ideal  that  contains  hoj>e.  Mere  writing  and 
oratory  and  enunciation  of  theory,  with  no  attempt  to 
secure  the  service  test,  amounts  to  nothing. 

This  applies  to  the  tenancy  problem.  It  also  applies 
to  every  other  farming  problem.  As  regards  each,  let 
us  teat  the  plans  for  reform,  so  far  as  may  be,  by  actual 
practice. 

For  many  of  these  plans  the  several  states  offer  them- 
selves as  natural  laboratories,  where  experiments  can 
be  tried  when  conditions  and  public  opinion  are  right; 
and  this  although  the  permanent  remedies  must  ulti- 
mately, at  least  in  major  part,  be  national.  It  Is  ex- 
ceeding'ly  interesting  to  watch  such  an  experiment  as 
that  seemingly  to  be  tried  in  North  Dakota.  This  Is  a 
farming  state,  w*here  the  farming  is  the  predominant 


THE  CORNER-STONE  OF  CIVILIZATION  88 

interest,  and  inasmuch  as  all  reforms  cost  money,  and  as 
even  advisable  reforms  become  utterly  disastrous  if  in 
spending  money  upon  them  we  treat  "the  sky  as  the 
limit,"  and  decline  to  consider  the  proportion  between 
what  the  reform  achieves  and  what  it  costs,  it  is  well 
that  the  fanners  themselves  should  pay  a  good  pro- 
portion   of    the    cost    of    reforms    necessary    to    and 
peculiarly  affecting  themselves.     In  North  Dakota,  in 
addition  to  matters  like  hail  insurance,  it  is  proposed 
that  the  state  shall  purchase  and  operate  grain  ele- 
vators, mills,  and  terminals,  and  other  business  instru- 
mentalities of  vital  concern  to  farmers.    I  most  heartily 
commend  the  earnest  effort  the  leaders  in  the  movement 
have  made  actually  to  hetter  conditions ;  and  I  say  this 
although  from  the  facts  at  my  command  I  judge  that 
most  of  the  work  which  it  is  thus  proposed  to  have  done 
by    the   state    could   be   done  better   by    cooperative 
societies  among  the  farmers  themselves.     Present  con- 
ditions should   certainly  be   changed.     To  keep   them 
unchanged  is  to  act  in  a  spirit  of  mere  Toryism.   From 
the  North  Dakota  experiment,  when  put  in  actual  prac- 
tice, we  can  learn  some  things  to  follow  and  some  things 
to  avoid ;  and  perhaps  we  can  also  learn  to  be  wise  in 
time,  and,  by  sane  determination  to  put  in  practice 
reforms  that  we  are  reasonably  sure  will  have  no  bad 
effects,  avoid  the  sad  necessity  of  paying  with  our  own 
skins   for  experiments   which  probably  will  hare  bad 
effects. 

I  greatly  prefer  to  see  the  Government  leave  un- 
touched whatever  the  corporations  wnder  Government 
supervision  can  do  ;  and  just  as  far  as  possible  I  want  to 
see  all  the  corporations  made  into   cooperative  asso- 


84  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

ciations.  But  there  are  things  so  important  that  the 
Government  must  do  them,  if  it  is  only  through  such 
exercise  of  collective  power  that  they  can  be  done. 

Our  object  must  be  (1)  to  make  the  tenant  farmer  a 
landowner;  (2)  to  eliminate  as  far  as  possible  the  con- 
ditions which  produce  the  shifting,  seasonal,  tramp  type 
of  labor,  and  to  give  the  farm  laborer  a  permanent 
status,  a  career  as  a  farmer,  for  which  his  school  educa- 
tion shall  fit  him,  and  which  shall  open  to  him  the  chance 
of  in  the  end  earning  the  ownership  in  fee  of  his  own 
farm;  (3)  to  secure  cooperation  among  the  small  land- 
owners, so  that  their  energies  shall  produce  the  best 
possible  results;  (4)  by  progressive  taxation  or  in 
other  fashion  to  break  up  and  prevent  the  formation  of 
great  landed  estates,  especially  in  so  far  as  they  consist 
of  unused  agricultural  land;  (5)  to  make  capital  avail- 
able for  the  farmers,  and  thereby  put  them  more  on 
equality  with  other  men  engaged  in  business  ;  (6)  to  care 
for  the  woman  on  the  farm  as  much  as  for  the  man,  and 
to  eliminate  the  conditions  which  now  so  often  tend  to 
make  her  life  one  of  gray  and  sterile  drudgery;  (7)  to 
do  this  primarily  through  the  farmer  himself,  but  also 
when  necessary,  by  the  use  of  the  entire  collective  power 
of  the  people  of  the  country ;  for  the  welfare  of  the 
farmer  is  the  concern  of  all  of  us. 

The  most  important  thing  to  do  is  to  make  the  tenant 
farmer  a  farm  owner.  He  must  be  financed  so  that  he 
can  acquire  title  to  the  land.  In  New  Zealand  the  gov- 
ernment buys  land  and  sells  it  to  small  holders  at  the 
price  paid  with  a  low  rate  of  interest.  Perhaps  our 
Government  could  try  this  plan,  or  else  could  outright 
advance  the  money,  charging  three  and  a  half  per  cent. 


THE  CORNER-STONE  OF  CIVILIZATION  85 

interest.  Default  in  payments — which  should  of  course 
be  on  easy  terms — would  mean  that  the  land  reverted  to 
the  Government.  The  experience  of  the  firms  which 
have  loaned  to  the  largest  number  of  people  to  acquire 
homes  on  small  instalment  payments  has  been  that  fore- 
closure occurs  in  a  very  small  percentage  of  cases ;  but 
it  would  have  to  be  absolutely  understood  that  no  failure 
to  pay  would  be  tolerated ;  for  such  toleration  would  in 
the  end  discredit  the  whole  system,  and  work  ruin  to  the 
honest  and  hard-working  men  who  would  pay.  We 
could  follow  the  precedents  established  in  connection 
with  the  reclamation  act  in  the  arid  and  semi-arid 
regions  of  the  West.  It  would  be  desirable,  and  entirely 
feasible,  to  try  the  experiment  first  on  a  small  scale,  in 
experimental  fashion ;  and  then  to  apply  it  on  a  larger 
and  larger  scale  with  the  modifications  shown  to  be 
necessary  in  actual  practice. 

To  break  up  the  big  estates  it  might  be  best  to  try  the 
graduated  land  tax,  or  else  to  equalize  taxes  as  between 
used  and  unused  agricultural  land,  which  would  prevent 
farm  land  being  held  for  speculative  purposes.  There 
can  without  question  be  criticism  of  either  proposal.  If 
any  better  proposal  can  be  made  and  tried  we  can  cheer- 
fully support  it  and  be  guided  in  our  theories  by  the 
way  it  turns  out.  But  we  ought  to  insist  on  something 
being  done — not  merely  talked  about.  Every  one  is 
agreed  that  we  ought  to  get  more  people  "back  to  the 
land";  but  talk  on  the  subject  is  utterly  useless  unless 
we  put  it  in  concrete  shape  and  secure  a  "service  test" 
even  though  it  costs  some  money  to  furnish  the  means 
for  doing  what  we  say  must  be  done. 

As  regards  furnishing  capital  to  the  farmer,  the  first 


86  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

need  is  that  we  shall  understand  that  this  is  essential, 
and  is  recognized  to  be  essential  in  most  civilized  lands 
outside  of  Russia  and  the  United  States,  but  especially 
in  Denmark,  France,  and  Germany.  Our  farmers  must 
have  working  capital.  The  present  laws  for  providing 
farm  loans  do  not  meet  the  most  important  case  of  all, 
that  of  the  tenant  farmer,  and  do  not  adequately  pro- 
vide for  the  land-owning  farmer.  An  immense  amount  of 
new  capital — an  amount  to  be  reckoned  in  billions  of 
dollars — is  needed  for  the  proper  development  of  the 
farms  of  the  United  States,  in  order  that  our  farmers 
may  pass  from  the  position  of  under-production  per 
acre,  may  improve  and  fertilize  their  lands,  and  so  stock 
them  as  both  to  secure  satisfactory  returns  upon  the 
money  invested  and  also  enoinnously  to  increase  the 
amount  of  food  produced,  while  permanently  enhancing 
the  value  of  the  land.  Lack  of  capital  on  the  part  of 
the  farmer  inevitably  means  soil  exhaustion  and  there- 
fore diminished  production.  The  farmer  who  is  to 
prosper  must  have  capital;  only  the  prosperous  can 
really  meet  the  needs  of  the  consumer ;  and  in  this,  as  in 
every  other  kind  of  honest  business,  the  only  proper 
basis  of  success  is  benefit  to  both  buyer  and  seller,  pro- 
ducer and  consumer. 

To  achieve  certain  of  these  objects  it  may  be  neces- 
sary to  make  use  of  the  Government;  but  wherever 
possible  it  is  better  to  use  private,  usually  corporate  or 
cooperative,  effort.  I  believe  that  the  day  is  coming 
when  many  kinds  of  successful  business  will  admit,  and 
insist  on,  an  alloy  of  philanthropy.  It  often  adds  to, 
instead  of  diminishing,  business  success,  to  become 
within  reasonable  limits  one's  brother's  keeper.     (Is  it 


THE  CORNER-STONE  OF  CTV^ILIZATION  87 

necessary  to  say  that  in  this  as  in  everything  else  there 
is  need  of  common  sense?) 

The  Jewish  Agricultural  and  Industrial  Aid  Society 
has  actually  tried  the  experiment  of  a  land  bank  to  help 
men  become  farmers.  In  seventeen  years,  at  an  outlay 
of  two  million  dollars,  it  has  established  thirty-five  hun- 
dred families  on  farms ;  and  the  losses  have  been  small. 
The  manager  of  this  society  is  now  head  of  the  Federal 
Land  IBank  in  Springfield,  Massachusetts.  He  has  pro- 
posed an  agrarian  land  bank  to  do  for  the  United  States 
as  a  whole  what  it  has  already  taken  part  in  successfully 
doing  for  some  thousands  of  people.  Such  a  land  bank 
would  aid  tenants  to  become  landowners,  agricultural 
laborers  to  become  small  farmers,  and  landless  immi- 
grants with  a  farming  past  to  go  out  on  the  land — 
where  we  need  them. 

California,  under  the  wise  administration  of  Hiram 
Johnson,  pointed  the  path  for  advance  in  this  as  in  so 
many  other  directions.  She  has  begun  the  development 
of  five  thousand  acres,  not  by  merely  throwing  the  land 
open  for  settlement,  but  by  building  roads,  school- 
houses,  and  even  certain  "improvements"  on  farms  of 
suitable  size;  the  effort  has  been  to  help  the  man  who 
wishes  to  farm  to  go  into  the  country  and  there  find 
livable  conditions. 

Whenever  farmers  themselves  have  the  intelligence 
and  energy  to  work  through  cooperative  societies  this 
is  far  better  than  having  the  state  vmdertake  the  work. 
Community  self-help  is  normally  preferable  to  using  the 
machinery  of  government  for  tasks  to  which  it  is  unac- 
customed. This  applies  to  the  ownership  of  granaries, 
slaughterhouses,  and  the  like.     There  are  in  Europe 


88  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

cooperative  farmers'  associations  which  own  and  run  at 
a  profit  manv  such  institutions ;  and  when  this  is  shown 
to  he  the  case,  the  other  owners  of  such  agencies  face 
the  accomplished  fact ;  and  it  often  becomes  possible 
for  the  farmers  then  to  deal  with  them  on  a  satisfactory 
basis. 

In  Europe  these  great  farmer  cooperative  asso- 
ciations sometimes  control  the  whole  machinery  by 
which  their  products  are  marketed.  Each  little  district 
has  its  own  cooperative  group.  The  groups  of  all  the 
districts  in  the  state  are  united  again  in  a  large  cooper- 
ative unit.  In  this  way  they  do  collectively  what  is 
beyond  the  power  of  any  one  farmer  individually  to 
accomplish.  By  sending  their  shipments  to  market  they 
move  them  in  great  bulk-quantities  at  the  lowest  possible 
cost.  They  contract  for  long  periods  ahead  and  sell  in 
the  most  advantageous  market.  Middlemen  are  elimi- 
nated. The  labor  of  moving  farm  products  is  reduced 
to  a  minimum.  But  these  enterprises  are  not  state  enter- 
prises. The  relationship  of  the  state  to  them  is  confined 
to  supervision,  just  as  our  bank  examiners  supervise  the 
association  of  stockholders  who  come  together  to  do  a 
banking  business ;  and  certain  general  regulations  that 
are  in  the  interest  of  public  policy  are  imposed  upon 
them.  A  standard  of  equity  and  fair  dealing  is  main- 
tained by  the  forcing  of  the  publication  of  accounts  and 
by  supplying  disinterested  examiners  who  see  to  it  that 
equity  is  preserved  by  honesty  and  fairness  among  those 
associated  in  the  enterprise. 

Of  course  the  personal  equation  is  all  important ;  the 
best  of  schemes  will  work  badly  if  we  force  it  against 
the  fundamental  issues  of  fairness  and  honesty. 


THE  CORNER-STONE  OF  CIVILIZATION  89 

A  single  farmer  to-day  is  no  match  for  the  corpora- 
tions, railroads,  and  business  enterprises  with  which  he 
must  deal.  Organized  into  cooperative  associations, 
however,  the  farmer's  power  would  be  enormously 
increased.  The  principle  upon  which  such  cooperative 
groups  are  formed  is  very  simple.  The  profits  are 
divided  partly  into  the  shape  of  a  rebate  that  is  paid  in 
proportion  to  the  volume  of  business  done  for  each 
member.  The  control,  however,  of  the  association  does 
not  depend  upon  the  number  of  shares  that  a  member 
may  own  but  rests  upon  the  democratic  basis  of  one 
man,  one  vote.  In  such  associations  they  elect  their  own 
officers  who  are  specifically  qualified  to  deal  with  the 
agricultural  problems  of  the  association.  These  officers 
are  subject  to  the  direct  control  of  those  whose  business 
and  interests  they  handle.  In  this  way  politics  is  kept 
out  of  the  farmer's  business.  Through  cooperative 
organization  our  farmers  can  build  up  their  strength. 

And  normally  they  can  do  better  in  this  way  than  by 
recourse  to  an  extreme  form  of  state  Socialism.  The 
farmers  of  Denmark,  Holland,  and  parts  of  France, 
North  Italy,  and  Germany  have  pointed  the  way.  In 
Denmark  on  a  country  road  in  the  afternoon  one  can 
see  a  man  wearing  a  cap  of  the  cooperative  association 
push  a  light  wagon  through  the  village,  gathering  from 
each  house  a  dozen  or  two  dozen  eggs  and  a  roll  of 
butter  and  cheese.  As  he  takes  it  he  stamps  the  eggs 
and  records  the  quantity  delivered  in  the  record  book 
of  the  member.  At  the  end  of  his  three  or  four  mile  trip 
he  meets  a  half-dozen  other  men  at  a  small  transfer 
station  owned  by  the  cooperative  association.  There 
wagons  or  trucks  load  the  products  brought  in  and  haul 


90  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

them  to  a  near-by  railroad  station  where  the  trucks  from 
five  or  six  transfer  stations  gather  and  fill  a  railroad 
car.  The  railroad  car  starts  and  in  its  journey  to  the 
seaport  meets  several  dozen  additional  cars  loaded  with 
the  products  of  the  association.  At  the  seaport  a  ship 
load  is  waiting  and  the  entire  train  load  of  products  is 
loaded  and  started  for  England.  In  England  this  ship 
is  unloaded  in  the  warehouse  of  an  Eng'lish  cooperative 
association.  The  products — ^butter,  eggs,  cheese,  milk, 
and  other  standard  farm  outputs — have  been  contracted 
for  on  a  sliding  scale  on  a  yearly  basis  in  advance. 
Between  the  peasant  farmer  of  Denmark  and  the  work- 
ingman  consumer  in  London  there  is  no  middleman. 
Handling  charges  are  reduced  to  the  minimum.  The 
gain  goes  to  the  producer  in  the  shape  of  almost  the 
full  price  and  to  the  consumer  in  the  shape  of  reduced 
cost.  The  cooperative  farmers'  association  of  Den- 
mark buys  saltpeter  and  nitrates  in  Chili  by  the  ship- 
load, and  distributes  them  as  they  are  unloaded  in  car- 
load lots  to  the  cooperative  associations  in  every  village 
at  a  handling  charge  that  is  almost  insignificantly  small. 
This  is  the  right  way  for  farmers  to  organize. 

Examples  of  what  is  done  In  foreign  lands  are  of 
great  use ;  yet  we  must  always  adapt  them  to  our  own 
needs,  and  not  merely  copy  them;  for  no  scheme  of 
national  betterment  can  succeed  unless  it  takes  into 
account  national  characteristics.  Experiments  in  our 
own  country  therefore  have  a  peculiar  guidance  value 
for  U3.  For  this  reason  those  interested  in  the  problem 
of  farm  life  can  well  afford  to  pay  some  attention  to 
what  is  at  this  moment  being  done  in  certain  districts  of 
our  own  country. 


VIII 

THE  NEW  FARMER  * 
Kenyon  L.  Butterfield 

Aiii.  farmers  may  be  divided  into  three  classes.  There 
is  the  "old"  farmer,  there  is  the  "new"  farmer,  and  there 
is  the  "mossback."  The  old  farmer  represents  the 
ancient  regime.  The  new  farmer  is  the  modern  business 
agriculturist.  The  mossback  is  a  medieval  survival. 
The  old  farmer  was  in  his  day  a  new  farmer ;  he  was  "up 
with  the  times,"  as  the  times  then  were.  The  new  farmer 
is  merely  the  worthy  son  of  a  noble  sire ;  he  is  the  modern 
embodiment  of  the  old  farmer's  progressiveness.  The 
mossback  is  the  man  who  tries  to  use  the  old  methods 
under  the  new  conditions :  he  is  not  "up"  with  the  pres- 
ent time,  but  "back"  with  the  old  times.  Though  he 
lives  and  moves  in  the  present,  he  really  has  his  being 
in  the  past. 

The  Old  farmer  is  the  man  who  conquered  the  Amer- 
ican continent.  His  axe  struck  the  crown  from  the 
monarches  of  the  wood,  and  the  fertile  farms  of  Ohio  are 
the  kingdom  he  created.  He  broke  the  sod  of  the  rich 
prairies,  and  the  tasseling  cornfields  of  Iowa  tell  the 
storj'  of  his  deeds.  He  hitched  his  plow  to  the  sun,  and 
his  westward  lengthening  furrows  fill  the  world's 
granary. 

*  From  "Chapters  in  Rural  Progress,"  by  permission  of  the  pmblishers^ 
University  of  Chicago  Press. 

91 


92  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

The  new  farmer  has  his  largest  conquests  j^et  to  make. 
But  he  has  put  his  faith  in  the  strong  arm  of  science : 
he  has  at  his  hand  the  commercial  mechanism  of  a  world 
of  'business.  He  believes  he  will  win  because  he  is  in 
league  with  the  ongoing  forces  of  our  civilization. 

The  mossback  cannot  win,  because  he  prefers  a  flint- 
lock to  a  Mauser.  He  has  his  eyes  upon  the  ground, 
and  uses  snails  instead  of  stars  for  horses. 

The  old  farmer  was  a  pioneer,  and  he  had  all  the 
courage,  enterprise,  and  resourcefulness  of  the  pioneer. 
He  was  virile,  above  all  things  else.  He  owned  and  con- 
trolled everything  in  sight.  He  was  a  state-builder. 
Half  a  century  ago,  in  the  Middle  West,  the  strong  men 
and  the  influential  families  were  largely  farmers.  Even 
professional  men  owned  and  managed  farms,  frequently 
living  upon  them.  The  smell  of  the  soil  sweetened  musty 
law  books,  deodorized  the  doctor's  den,  and  floated  as 
incense  above  the  church  altars. 

The  new  farmer  lives  in  a  day  when  the  nation  is  not 
purely  an  agricultural  nation,  but  is  also  a  manufac- 
turing and  a  trading  nation.  He  belongs  no  longer  to 
the  dominant  class,  so  far  as  commercial  and  social  and 
political  influences  are  concerned.  But  none  of  these 
things  move  him.  For  he  realizes  that  out  of  this  seem- 
ing decline  of  agriculture  grow  his  best  opportunities. 
He  discards  pioneer  methods  because  pioneering  is 
not  now  an  eff'ective  art. 

The  mossback  sees  perhaps  clearly  enough  these 
changes,  but  he  does  not  understand  their  meaning,  nor 
does  he  know  how  to  meet  them.  He  is  dazzled  by  the 
romantic  halo  of  the  good  old  times,  dumfounded  by 
the  electric  energy  of  the  present,  discouraged  and  dis- 


THE  NEW  FARiNlER  93 

tracted  by  the  pressure  of  forces  that  crush  his  hopes 
and  stifle  his  strength. 

Economically,  the  old  farmer  was  not  a  business  man, 
but  a  barterer.  The  rule  of  barter  still  survives  in  the 
country  grocery  where  butter  and  eggs  are  traded  for 
sugar  and  salt.  The  old  farmer  was  industrially  self- 
sufficient.  He  did  not  farm  on  a  commercial  basis.  He 
raised  apples  for  eating  and  for  cider,  not  for  market — 
there  was  no  apple  market.  He  had  very  little  ready 
money,  he  bought  and  sold  few  products.  He  traded. 
Even  his  grain,  which  afterwards  became  the  farmer's 
great  cash  crop,  was  raised  in  small  quantities  and 
ground  at  the  nearest  mill — not  for  export,  but  for  a 
return  migration  to  the  family  flour-barrel. 

The  new  farmer  has  always  existed — because  he  is 
the  old  farmer  growing.  He  has  kept  pace  with  our 
industrial  evolution.  When  the  regime  of  barter  passed 
away,  he  ceased  to  barter.  When  the  world's  market 
became  a  fact,  he  raised  wheat  for  the  world's  market. 
As  agriculture  became  a  business,  he  became  a  business 
man.  As  agricultural  science  began  to  contribute  to 
the  art  of  farming,  he  studied  applied  science.  As  in- 
dustrial education  developed,  he  founded  and  patronized 
institutions  for  agricultural  education.  As  alertness 
and  enterprise  began  to  be  indispensable  in  commercial 
activity,  he  grew  alert  and  enterprising. 

The  mossback  is  the  man  who  has  either  misread  the 
signs  of  the  times,  or  who  has  not  possessed  the  speed 
demanded  in  the  two-minute  class.  He  is  the  old  farmer 
gone  to  seed.  He  tries  to  fit  the  old  methods  to  the 
new  regime. 

But  it  is  not  sufficient  to  picture  the  new  farmer. 


94  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

You  must  explain  him.  What  is  it  that  makes  the  new 
farmer?  Who  is  he?  What  are  his  tools?  In  the  first 
place,  you  cannot  explain  the  new  farmer  unless  you 
know  the  old  farmer.  You  cannot  have  the  new  farmer 
unless  you  also  have  the  mossback.  The  new  farmer  is 
a  comparative  person,  as  it  were.  You  have  to  define 
him  in  terms  of  the  mossback.  The  contrast  is  not 
between  the  old  farmer  and  the  new,  for  that  is  merely  a 
question  of  relative  conditions  in  different  epochs  of 
time.  The  contrast  is  between  the  new  farmer  and  the 
mossback,  for  that  is  a  question  of  men  and  of  their 
relative  efficiency  as  members  of  the  industrial  order. 
Then,  of  course,  you  must  observe  the  individual  traits 
that  characterize  the  new  farmer,  such  as  keenness, 
business  instinct,  readiness  to  adopt  new  methods,  and, 
in  fact,  all  the  qualities  that  make  a  man  a  success 
to-day  in  any  calling.  For  the  new  farmer,  in  respect 
to  his  personal  qualities,  is  not  a  sport,  a  phenomenon. 
He  does  not  stand  out  as  a  distinct  and  peculiar  speci- 
men. He  is  a  successful  American  citizen  who  grows 
corn  instead  of  making  steel  rails. 

But  you  have  not  yet  explained  the  new  farmer. 
These  personal  traits  do  not  explain  him.  It  may  bo 
possible  to  explain  an  individual  and  his  success  by 
calling  attention  to  his  characteristics,  and  yet  you 
cannot  completely  analyze  him  and  his  career  unless 
you  understand  the  conditions  under  which  he  works — 
the  industrial  and  social  environment.  Much  less  can 
you  explain  a  class  of  people  by  describing  their  per- 
sonal characteristics.  You  must  reach  out  into  the 
great  current  of  life  that  is  about  them,  and  discern  the 
direction  and  power  of  that  current. 


THE  NEW  FARMER  95 

Now,  the  conditions  that  tend  to  make  the  new 
farmer  possible  may  be  grouped  in  an  old-fashioned  way 
under  two  heads.  In  the  old  scientific  phrases  the  two 
forces  that  make  the  new  farmer  are  the  "struggle  for 
life"  and  "environment,"  or,  to  use  other  words,  com- 
petition and  opportunity. 

Competition  has  pressed  severely  upon  the  farmer, 
competition  at  home  and  competition  from  other  coun- 
tries. At  one  time  the  heart  of  the  wheat-growing 
industry  of  this  country  was  near  Rochester,  N.  Y.,  in 
the  Genesee  Valley ;  but  the  canal  and  the  railway  soon 
made  possible  the  occupation  of  the  great  granary  of 
the  West.  A  multitude  of  ambitious  young  men  soon 
took  possession  of  that  granary,  and  the  flour-milLs 
were  moved  from  Rochester  to  Minneapolis.  This  is  an 
old  story,  but  the  same  forces  are  still  at  work.  There 
has  been  developed  a  world-market.  The  sheep  of  the 
Australian  bush  have  become  competitors  of  the  flocks 
that  feed  upon  the  green  Vermont  mountains  and  the 
Ohio  hills.  The  plains  of  Argentina  grow  wheat  for 
London.  Russia,  Siberia,  and  India  pour  a  constant 
stream  of  golden  grain  into  the  industrial  centers  of 
Western  Europe,  and  the  price  of  American  wheat  is 
fixed  in  London.  These  forces  have  produced  still 
another  kind  of  competition ;  namely,  specialization 
among  farmers.  Localities  particularly  adapted  to 
special  crops  are  becoming  centers  where  skill  and  in- 
telligence bring  the  industry  to  its  height.  The  truck- 
farming  of  the  South  Atlantic  region,  the  fruit-growing 
of  western  Michigan,  the  butter  factories  of  Wisconsin 
and  Minnesota,  have  crowded  almost  to  suffocation  the 
small  market-gardener  of  the  northern  town,  the  man 


96  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

with  a  dozen  peach  trees,  and  the  farmer  who  keeps  two 
cows  and  trades  the  surplus  butter  for  calico.  These 
things  have  absolutely  forced  progress  upon  the  farmer. 
It  is  indeed  a  "struggle  for  life."  Out  of  it  comes 
the  "survival  of  the  fittest,"  and  the  fittest  is  the  new 
farmer. 

But  along  with  competition  has  come  opportunity. 
Indeed,  out  of  these  very  facts  that  have  made  com- 
petition so  strenuous  spring  the  most  marvelous  oppor- 
tunities for  the  progressive  farmer.  Specialization 
brings  out  the  best  that  there  is  in  the  locality  and  the 
man.  It  gives  a  chance  to  apply  science  to  farming. 
Our  transportation  system  permits  the  peach  growers 
of  Grand  Rapids  to  place  their  crops  at  a  profit  in  the 
markets  of  Buffalo  and  Pittsburg;  the  rich  orchards 
and  vineyards  of  Southern  California  find  their  chief 
outlet  in  the  cities  of  the  manufacturing  Northeast — ■ 
three  thousand  miles  away.  During  the  forty  years, 
from  1860,  the  exports  of  wheat  from  this  country 
increased  from  four  million  bushels  annually  to  one 
hundred  and  forty  million  bushels ;  of  corn,  from  three 
and  one  third  million  bushels  to  one  hundred  and 
seventy-five  million  bushels ;  of  beef  products,  from 
twenty  million  pounds  to  three  hundred  and  seventy 
million  pounds ;  of  pork  products,  from  ninety-eight 
million  pounds  to  seventeen  hundred  million  pounds. 
And  not  only  do  the  grain  and  stock  farmers  find  this 
outlet  for  their  surplus  products,  but  we  are  beginning 
to  ship  abroad  high-grade  fruit  and  first-class  dairy 
products  in  considerable  quantities.  Low  rates  of  freight, 
modern  methods  of  refrigeration,  express  freight  trains, 
fast  freight  steamers — the  whole  machinery  of  the  com- 


THE  NEW  FARMER  97 

•mercial  and  financial  world  are  at  the  service  of  the  new 
farmer.  Science,  also,  has  found  a  world  of  work  in 
ministering  to  the  needs  of  agriculture,  and  in  a  hundred 
different  ways  the  new  farmer  finds  helps  that  have 
sprung  up  from  the  broadcast  sowing  of  the  hand  of 
science. 

But  perhaps  even  more  remarkable  opportunities 
come  to  the  new  farmer  in  those  social  agencies  that 
tend  to  remove  the  isolation  of  the  country ;  that  assist 
in  educating  the  farmer  broadly ;  that  give  farmers  as  a 
class  more  influence  in  legislature  and  congress ;  and 
that,  in  fine,  maike  rural  life  more  worth  the  living.  The 
new  farmer  cannot  be  explained  until  one  is  some- 
what familiar  with  the  character  of  these  rural  social 
agencies. 

It  must  not  be  supposed  that  every  successful 
farmer  is  necessarily  a  supporter  of  all  of  these  social 
agencies.  He  may  be  a  prosperous  farmer  just  because 
he  is  good  at  the  art  of  farming,  or  because  he  is  a  keen 
business  man.  But  more  and  more  he  is  coming  to  see 
that  these  things  are  opportunities  that  he  cannot 
afford  to  disregard.  Indeed,  some  of  these  Institutions 
are  largely  the  creation  of  the  new  farmer  himself.  He 
is  using  them  as  tools  to  fashion  a  better  rural  social 
structure. 

But  they  also  fashion  him.  They  serve  to  explain 
him,  in  great  part.  Competition  inspires  the  farmer  to 
his  best  efforts.  The  opportunity  offered  by  these  new 
and  growing  advantages  gives  him  the  implements 
wherewith  to  make  his  rightful  niche  in  the  social  and 
industrial  system. 

It  would  be  erroneous  to  suppose  that  the  new  farmer 


98  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

is  a  rara  avis.  He  is  not.  The  spirit  pervading  the 
ranks  of  farmers  is  rapidly  changing.  We  have  been 
in  a  state  of  transition  in  agriculture.  But  the  farther 
shore  has  been  reached  and  the  bridge  is  possible.  The 
army  of  rural  advancement  is  being  recruited  with  great 
rapidity.  The  advance  guard  is  more  than  a  body  of 
scouts,  it  is  an  effective  brigade. 

I  want  also  to  make  a  plea  for  the  mossback.  He 
must  not  be  condemned  utterly.  Remember  that  com- 
petition among  farmers  has  been  intense;  that  rural 
environment  breeds  conservatism.  Remember  also  that 
the  farmer  cannot  change  his  methods  as  rapidly  as  can 
some  other  business  men.  Remember,  too,  that  there  is 
comparatively  small  chance  for  speculation  in  agri- 
culture; that  large  aggregates  of  capital  cannot  be 
collected  for  farming,  and  consequently,  that  the 
approved  means  for  securing  immense  wealth,  great 
industrial  advancement,  and  huge  enterprises  are  nearly 
absent  in  agriculture.  Remember  that  the  voices  calling 
from  the  city  deplete  the  country  of  many  good  farmers 
as  well  as  many  poor  ones.  Moreover,  there  are  many 
men  on  farms  who  perhaps  don't  care  for  farming,  but 
who  for  some  reasons  cannot  get  away.  On  the  farm 
a  man  need  not  starve;  he  can  make  a  livelihood. 
Doubtless  this  simple  fact  is  responsible  for  a  multitude 
of  mossbacks.  They  can  live  without  strenuous  en- 
deavor. Possibly  a  good  many  of  us  are  strenuous 
because  we  are  pushed  into  it.  So  I  have  a  good  deal  of 
sympathy  for  the  mossback,  and  a  mild  sort  of  scorn 
for  some  of  his  critics,  who  probably  could  not  do  any 
better  than  he  is  doing  if  they  essayed  the  gentle  art  of 
agriculture.     I  also  have  sympathy  for  the  mossback 


THE  NEW  FARMER  99 

particularly  because  he  is  the  man  that  needs  attention. 
The  new  farmer  takes  the  initiative.  He  patronizes 
these  opportunities  that  we  have  been  talking  about. 
But  the  mossback,  because  he  is  discouraged,  or  because 
he  is  ignorant,  or  perhaps  merely  because  he  is  con- 
servative, takes  little  interest  in  these  things.  About 
one  farmer  in  ten  belongs  to  some  sort  of  farmers'  asso- 
ciation. Thousands  of  farmers  do  not  take  an  agri- 
cultural paper,  and  perhaps  millions  of  them  have  not 
read. an  agricultural  book.  Right  here  comes  in  another 
fact'.  Every  "new"  farmer  when  full  grown  competes 
with  every  mossback.  The  educated  farmer  makes  it 
still  harder  for  the  ignorant  farmer  to  progress. 

The  future  of  the  American  farmer  is  one  of  the  most 
pregnant  social  problems  with  which  we  have  to  deal. 
There  is  indeed  an  issue  involved  in  the  success  of  the 
new  farmer  that  is  still  more  fundamental  than  any  yet 
mentioned.  The  old  farmer  had  a  social  standing  that 
made  him  essentially  a  middle-class  man.  He  was  a  land- 
holder, he  was  independent,  he  was  successful.  He  was 
the  typical  American  citizen.  The  old  farmer  was 
father  to  the  best  blood  of  America.  His  sons  and  his 
sons'  sons  have  answered  to  the  roll  call  of  our  country's 
warriors,  statesmen,  writers,  captains  of  industry. 

Can  the  new  farmer  maintain  the  same  relative  social 
status?  And  if  he  can,  is  he  to  be  an  aristocrat,  a  land- 
lord, a  captain  of  industry,  and  to  bear  rule  over  the 
mossback?  And  is  the  tribe  of  mossbacks  destined  to 
increase  and  become  a  caste  of  permanent  tenants  or 
peasants?  Is  the  future  American  farmer  to  be  the 
typical  new  farmer  of  the  present,  or  are  we  traveling 
toward  a  social  condition  in  which  the  tillers  of  the  soil 


100  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

will  be  underlings?  Is  there  coming  a  time  when  the 
"man  with  the  hoe"  will  be  the  true  picture  of  the  Amer- 
ican farmer,  with  a  low  standard  of  living,  without 
ideals,  without  a  chance  for  progress? 

We  must  eliminate  the  mossback.  It  is  to  be  done 
largely  by  education  and  by  cooperation.  There  must 
be  a  campaign  for  rural  progress.  There  must  be  a 
union  of  the  country  school  teacher,  of  the  agricultural 
college  professor,  of  the  rural  pastor,  of  the  country 
editor,  with  the  farmers  themselves,  for  the  production 
of  an  increased  crop  of  new  farmers.  Anything  that 
makes  farm  life  more  worth  living,  anything  that 
banishes  rural  isolation,  anything  that  dignifies  the 
business  of  farming  and  makes  it  more  prosperous,  any- 
thing that  broadens  the  farmer's  horizon,  anything  that 
gives  him  a  greater  grasp  of  the  rural  movement,  any- 
thing that  makes  him  a  better  citizen,  a  better  business 
man,  or  a  better  man,  means  the  passing  of  the 
mossback. 


IX 

THE  NEW  CALL  TO  THE  FARM  * 

T.  Bayard  Collins 

"Back  to  the  soil"  was  never  a  more  attractive 
proposition  and  never  so  worthy  of  being  heeded  as 
during  these  opening  years  of  the  twentieth  century. 
It  is  true  that  social  economists  have  often  uttered  this 
cry  because  they  believed,  and  rightly,  that  the  over- 
crowded condition  of  cities  could  be  relieved,  to  the 
immense  advantage  of  everybody  concerned,  if  the  con- 
gested population  found  in  sections  of  these  human 
hives  could  be  induced  to  leave  their  crowded  quarters 
and  become  tillers  of  the  soil.  The  advocates  of  the  doc- 
trine have  had  in  mind  a  more  decent  and  desirable  con- 
dition for  the  objects  of  their  solicitude — a  place  where 
they  could  develop  a  physical,  social,  and  moral  life 
superior  to  that  which  is  possible  to  them  in  their 
present  place  of  abode.  The  cry  with  which  this  opens, 
however,  is  not  uttered  especially  to  a  crowded  urban 
population.  It  is  uttered  to  all  men — to  the  inhabitants 
of  every  city,  of  whatever  magnitude ;  to  the  dwellers  in 
villages  and  hamlets,  and  to  those  who  are  already  on 
the  land,  that  they  may  be  contented  to  remain  there. 
It  is  uttered  to  the  dissatisfied  of  every  condition  of 
life,  or  to  those  who  ought  to  be  dissatisfied.     It  is  the 

*  From  "The  New  Agriculture,"  by  permission  of  the  publishers,  Munn 
and  CompaBy. 

101 


102  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

cry,  not  of  social  economists  only,  not  only  of  preach- 
ers, teachers,  and  statesmen,  as  distinguished  from 
politicians,  but  of  seers,  of  men  who  look  into  the  future 
and  see  the  good  things  that  are  there  and  the  better 
things  that  are  coming. 

We  are  at  the  beginning  of  an  era  wonderful  in  the 
annals  of  agriculture;  an  era  in  which  experiment  and 
foresight  and  skiU  and  invention  and  learning  will 
transmute,  as  never  before,  the  labor  bestowed  upon  the 
land  into  wealth  and  health  and  happiness  and  length  of 
days ;  an  era  of  progress  and  development  as  wonderful 
as  any  that  has  hitherto  astounded  the  world  in  other 
departments  of  investigation  and  endeavor,  in  which 
agriculture  will,  for  progress,  take  her  stand  side  by 
side  with  the  industry  of  shipbuilding,  for  instance, 
which  has  within  a  comparatively  few  years  reduced  the 
time  for  crossing  the  Atlantic  from  three  months  to  less 
than  twice  that  many  days,  and  increased  the  carrying 
capacity  of  single  vessels  from  a  few  hundreds  to  many 
thousands  of  tons ;  by  the  side  of  railroading  in  which 
speed  and  safety  and  capacity  has,  in  each  succeeding 
year,  laughed  at  the  impossibilities  of  the  year  Just 
gone ;  by  the  side  of  electrical  development  which,  from 
a  meager  beginning  of  a  generation  ago,  now  renders  us 
speechless  in  the  presence  of  its  phenomena  of  light  and 
heat  and  power,  and  other  manifestations  still  more 
subtle  and  marvelous. 

In  agriculture,  the  great  mass  of  mankind  have  not 
looked  upon  intelligence  and  mental  training  as  of 
especial  value.  Too  many  have  thought  of  farmers  as 
men  "whose  talk  was  of  oxen  and  whose  employment  was 
in  their  labors";  have  thought  of  those  "labors"  as 


THE  NEW  CALL  TO  THE  FARM        103 

being  drudgery  for  the  most  part,  and  of  financial 
returns  so  meager  as  to  render  farming  utterly  unat- 
tractive to  any  active  man's  contemplation.  "By  and 
by,"  said  a  philosopher  of  the  last  generation,  "by  and 
by  it  will  be  generally  realized  that  few  men  live,  or  have 
lived,  who  could  not  find  scope  for  all  their  intellect  on 
a  two-hundred-acre  farm."  Two  score  3'ears  have  not 
yet  gone  since  those  words  were  uttered.  To-day  they 
are  fulfilled.  It  is  now  generally  known  that  agricul- 
ture offers  an  immense  field  for  investigation  and  de- 
velopment by  strictly  scientific  methods.  Men  of  large 
business  experience  are  going  into  it,  and  weU-to-do 
professional  men  and  merchants  are  taking  it  up  as  a 
feature  of  their  summer  life,  finding  in  serious  contact 
with  the  soil  a  worthy  exercise  of  their  highest  faculties, 
and  reaping  from  their  labor  a  ddightful  experience  of 
things  brought  to  pass.  Those  who  are  already  on  the 
farm  have  come  to  realize  that  the  best  mental  equip- 
ment is  none  too  good  for  the  tillers  of  the  soil.  They 
have  demanded  schools  and  colleges  and  courses  of  in- 
struction for  themselves  and  their  sons  which  shall  fit 
them  to  make  of  the  farm  a  plant  for  the  scientific  and 
skilful  production  of  all  that  it  will  yield.  Statesmen 
and  educators  inculcated  and  fostered  the  same  idea. 
Washington,  a  practical  farmer,  whose  technical  educa- 
tion was  probably  second  to  that  of  no  man  of  his 
time  in  America,  repeatedly  brought  to  the  attention  of 
Congress  the  importance  of  providing  adequate  educa- 
tional facilities  and  other  encouragements  in  agricul- 
ture. Partly  out  of  these  recommendations,  but  more 
immediately  out  of  the  seed  distribution  originated  in 
the  Department  of  State  during  the  Presidency  of  John 


104  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

Quincy  Adams,  sprang  the  United  States  Department 
of  Agriculture,  which  in  our  day  has  attained  such  im- 
mense proportions,  and  the  work  of  which  is  of  such  in- 
calculable profit  and  importance.  The  different  states 
of  the  Union,  seeing  the  importance  of  technical  train- 
ing in  the  farming  community,  have  provided  colleges 
for  this  purpose,  which  now  dot  the  land  in  all  its  sec- 
tions. These  schools  are  surrounded  with  ample  farms 
in  which  practical  demonstration  goes  hand  in  hand 
with  the  theories  taught  and  the  facts  acquired  in  the 
classroom ;  they  are  provided  with  improved  buildings, 
in  many  cases  ideally  adapted  to  the  purposes  for  which 
they  were  constructed ;  they  are  granted  large  means 
for  the  prosecution  of  their  work ;  they  are  equipped 
with  precise  instruments  and  all  paraphernalia  requisite 
for  the  successful  prosecution  of  scientific  investigation ; 
and  they  are  manned  by  scholarly  and  competent  men 
who  are  imbued  with  the  importance  and  the  possibilities 
of  their  position. 

The  progress  in  other  lines  of  human  activity  has  had 
its  influence  upon  agriculture.  If  men  have  found 
secrets  in  the  sea  and  in  the  stars  and  in  the  ether  which 
fills  the  Interstices  between  the  atoms  of  the  air  as  water 
might  fill  the  space  in  a  barrel  of  bullets,  the  soil  also 
has  been  searched  for  its  mysteries,  and  is  being  made  to 
yield  them,  too,  in  a  truly  wonderful  manner.  Lands 
which  were  not  only  thought  worthless,  but  which  were 
really  so,  are  now  made  to  bloom  and  blossom  as  the 
rose.  Roads  which  were  almost  always  bad,  and  at 
times  impassable  and  considered  impracticable  of  im- 
provement, are  now  transformed  by  the  magic  of  mind 
and  muscle  into  highways  of  profit  and  delight.    Frosts 


THE  NEW  CALL  TO  THE  FARM        105 

are  defied  bj  new  varieties  of  fruits  and  grain  which  live 
and  thrive  and  mature  into  money  where  their  prede- 
cessors wilted  and  died  under  the  blighting  breath  of 
a  providence  which  they  could  not  withstand,  to  the  dis- 
couragement, and  sometimes  to  the  despair,  of  the  hus- 
bandman. The  cactus,  that  abundant  but  useless 
growth  of  the  desert,  has  but  recentl}'^  been  rendered  a 
delicious  fruit  capable  of  being  grown  throughout  the 
length  and  breadth  of  the  continent,  and  not  only  has 
the  noxious  herb  been  transformed  into  a  valuable  food 
for  man  and  beast,  but  the  same  skill  and  scientific 
treatment  which  has  been  efficacious  for  this  amazing 
transformation  has  also  removed  the  spines,  those 
needles  which  formerly  covered  it  and  rendered  it  so 
difficult  to  handle.  What  has  been  done  with  the  cactus 
is  the  adumbration  and  prophecy  of  what  is,  one  might 
almost  say,  becoming  general  in  the  realm  of  agricul- 
ture. Alread}'^  the  seedless  apple  and  the  pitless  plum 
and  the  stingless  bee  have  been  attained.  Fruits  have 
been  developed  for  which  a  name  had  to  be  invented — 
the  tangelo,  for  instance,  which  Adam  did  not  find  in 
all  his  rounds  in  the  Garden  of  Eden,  and  which  nature 
never  produced  till  a  wizard  of  agriculture,  Webber, 
waved  his  wand  over  the  fruit  trees  of  his  farm  and  bid 
the  thing  appear.  Burbank  has  more  than  doubled  the 
size  of  various  fruits  and  flowers  and  esculent  roots,  and 
Avithin  a  considerable  range  finds  himself  able  to  change 
the  colors  of  nature  almost  at  will.  Under  his  manipula- 
tion the  white  blackberry  is  now  an  accomplished  fact, 
and  he  tells  us  that  he  will  give  us  a  blue  rose  as  soon  as 
he  can  spare  the  time  to  coax  it  into  being.  And  we  must 
remember  that  it  is  only  recently  that  he  has  been  given 


106  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

the  means  and  assistance  that  the  dignity  of  his  work 
deserves.  It  may  not  be  said  that  Burbank  is  at  the 
beginning  of  his  career,  but  it  is  certain  that  the  work 
which  he  has  pointed  out  the  way  to  perform  will  be 
carried  forward  by  a  great  number  of  men,  and  that 
agriculture  is  but  entering  upon  an  era  of  development 
which  will  be  as  surprising  as  it  will  be  profitable. 
Already  the  agricultural  colleges  of  this  and  foreign 
lands  and  our  own  and  foreign  Agricultural  Depart- 
ments through  their  various  experiment  stations  are 
working  along  these  and  other  original  lines,  and  the 
wonderful,  the  helpful,  and  the  profitable  are  being 
brought  to  light  every  day.  The  pests  of  his  plants  and 
the  diseases  of  his  animals  which  were  once  the  terror  of 
the  farmer  are  now  so  subject  to  control  and  cure  as  to 
give  him  little  more  than  passing  concern.  Information 
is  now  available  regarding  probable  weather  conditions 
which  subserve  both  his  convenience  and  his  profit. 
Eighty  millions  of  people  in  this  country  alone  are 
backing  the  work  of  the  Weather  Bureau  which  sends 
its  forecasts  to  the  furthermost  sections  of  the  country, 
and  rural  deliveries  and  country  telephone  lines  carry 
to  millions  of  farmers  these  predictions,  85  per  cent,  of 
which  come  true.  Our  own  Weather  Bureau  and  those 
of  other  countries  are  studying  climatic  and  weather 
conditions  with  an  intelligence  and  enthusiasm  never 
before  displayed.  The  reasons  for  drouth  and  flood  are 
being  pried  into  with  the  same  persistence  that  phy- 
sicians seek  for  the  germ  of  a  deadly  disease,  and  the 
origin  and  prognosis  of  a  hot  wind  will  yet  be  as 
accurately  determined  as  that  of  a  fever.  The  upper 
air  is  being  explored,  and  men  are  already  knocking  at 


THE  NEW  CALL  TO  THE  FARM        107 

the  home  of  the  storm  with  the  view  of  learning  the 
secrets  that  lie  hidden  there.  There  are  conservative 
data  for  believing  that  in  the  not  distant  future 
scientific  forecasts  of  the  weather  will  reach  within  5 
per  cent,  of  absolute  accuracy  and  that  they  will  be 
made  for  at  least  a  season,  and  perhaps  a  year,  in  ad- 
vance. What  will  it  mean  when  the  Government  fore- 
tells for  our  farmers,  witli  95  per  cent,  of  fulfillment,  for 
three  months  in  advance,  whether,  in  a  given  locality, 
the  season  is  going  to  be  early  or  late,  hot  or  cold,  wet 
or  dry.? 

Starch  is  now  increased  in  corn  and  potatoes  at  will, 
sugar  in  beets  and  cane,  and  gluten  in  wheat.  If  the 
eggs  from  your  poultry  are'  too  small  for  your  liking 
they  may  be  increased  in  size,  and  if  there  is  not  enough 
nitrogen  in  your  soil  you  may  sow  it  broadcast  with 
bacteria  at  four  cents  an  acre  and  these  microscopic 
organisms  will  extract  the  needed  element  from  the  air 
and  feed  it  to  your  plants.  Is  your  land  an  alkali 
desert,  you  may  obtain  seeds  and  plants  which  will 
thrive  even  there  and  return  you  a  profitable  crop.  Not 
only  is  drainage  appreciated  and  applied  to  an  extent 
never  before  attempted  in  this  country,  but  drouth  is 
being  circumvented  and  defied,  until,  all  in  all,  the  un- 
certainties of  the  agriculturist  are  fewer  than  those 
of  almost  an}'  other  independent  avocation. 

It  is  freely  admitted  that  the  farmer's  life  still 
involves  much  hard  labor  and  anxious  care;  that  the 
elements  may  be  against  him,  and  that  in  one  evil  hour 
he  may  see  the  well-directed  toil  of  months  swept 
away ;  that  his  animals  are  subject  to  ills  which  his  most 
assiduous    care    will    not    cure ;    insects    and    micro- 


108  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

organisms  may  bllglit  and  destroy  his  various  growths 
of  grain  and  fruit  and  root  and  deprive  him,  not  only 
of  his  hope  of  abundance,  but  even  of  the  most  meager 
return  for  his  labor.  Men  of  wide  observation  and  ex- 
perience strongly  advise  against  undertaking  the 
vocation  of  the  farmer  without  at  least  $500  of 
capital  to  begin  with,  and  this  would  seem  to  be  little 
enough,  but  the  day  when  a  man  might  begin  without  a 
penny  and  yet  succeed  has  by  no  means  gone  by. 
Doubtless,  under  such  circumstances,  success  is  more 
readily  reached  in  some  parts  of  the  country  than  in 
others.  Seven  years  ago  there  entered  one  of  the  counties 
of  west-central  Georgia  a  young  man  who  said  he  was 
from  Indiana.  He  was  very  poorly  dressed,  and  his  few 
belongings  he  carried  on  a  stick  over  his  shoulder.  He 
never  vouchsafed  much  information  regarding  himself, 
more  than  that  he  had  come  down  on  foot — his  appear- 
ance indicated  it — and  that  he  had  stopped  there  simply 
because  he  liked  the  country.  He  worked  for  a  nursery- 
man during  the  first  winter  for  his  board  and  lodging. 
The  next  spring  he  was  given  a  pittance  for  helping  to 
put  in  the  crops.  Later  he  assisted  in  the  cultivation 
of  a  neighboring  farm,  and  so  efficient  did  he  prove  that 
the  whole  county  soon  learned  of  his  presence.  He 
made  a  hand  in  the  corn-pulling  and  the  cotton-picking, 
and  later  found  work  with  a  ginncr.  During  his  first 
year  he  had  been  looked  upon  with  some  suspicion ;  but 
so  scrupulously  had  he  conducted  himself  and  so  indus- 
trious and  intelligent  had  he  shown  himself,  that  this 
feeling  in  regard  to  him  was  gradually  disarmed.  He 
applied  for  the  position  of  teacher  in  the  district  school 
and  got  it.    The  term  lasted  six  weeks,  and  he  was  three 


THE  NEW  CALL  TO  THE  FARM        109 

months  in  collecting  his  pay.  He  married  the  daughter 
of  the  best  educated  man  in  the  county,  a  preacher,  and 
with  his  young  wife,  he  settled  upon  a  run-down  rented 
farm.  To-day  he  owns  a  hundred  and  forty  acres  of 
fertile  land  without  a  dollar  of  indebtedness,  and  is 
looked  upon  as  one  of  the  most  prosperous  and 
respected  men  in  his  section  of  the  state. 

These  results  may  doubtless  be  duplicated,  but  only 
by  the  same  factors  of  character,  industry,  and  intelli- 
gence. If  a  young  man  begins  his  married  life  without 
other  means  than  those  with  which  nature  has  endowed 
himself  and  his  helpmeet — a  good,  clear  mind  and 
muscular  arms — ^he  must  expect  years  of  struggle,  of 
frugality,  of  resolute,  persistent  industry  before  he  can 
find  an  assured  and  ample  income,  seasons  of  ease  and 
the  surroundings  of  comparative  luxury.  On  the  farm 
much  of  the  work  is  rugged  and  some  of  it  repulsive. 
He  will  see  other  men  no  brighter,  no  more  able  than 
lie  —  merchants,  manufacturers,  professional  men  — 
making  money  with  apparent  rapidity  and  ease  while 
his  savings  are  meager  and  hard  earned.  He  must  be 
moved  by  none  of  these  things.  He  is  not  striving  for 
another's  success,  but  for  his  own. 

And  there  will,  of  course,  be  failures.  The  incom- 
petent, the  shiftless,  the  indolent  will  fail.  Those  to 
whom  farm  life  in  general  is  distasteful,  who  do  not  like 
its  solitude  and  who  do  not  love  nature,  who  can  find  no 
deilight  in  growing  things  and  in  the  marvelous  pro- 
cesses of  season  and  soil  and  seed — to  such  the  farm 
would  be  a  weariness  not  to  be  endured  and  they  had 
better  seek  a  livelihood  elsewhere. 

But  even  as  we  write  the  elements  are  being  foretold. 


110  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

and  as  we  shall  see  there  are  other  means  at  the  farmer's 
command  for  his  protection  against  unfavorable  atmos- 
pheric conditions,  so  that  less  and  less  are  blizzard  and 
flood  and  drouth  to  hazard  the  rewards  of  his  toil.  If  it 
is  suggested  that  labor  on  the  land  is  sometimes  repul- 
sive, we  recall  that  the  work  of  some  of  the  professions 
is  equally  so — the  physician,  the  nurse,  the  soldier,  for 
instance.  As  for  the  difficulties  that  beset  him  in  the 
diseases  which  afflict  his  cattle  and  his  crops,  these  are 
yielding  to  the  same  applications  of  intelligence  that 
are  proving  so  efficacious  in  the  treatment  of  the  various 
diseases  to  which  human  flesh  is  heir.  It  is  the  fact  of 
modern  science  successfully  combating  the  discouraging 
and  destructive  factors  in  the  farmer's  occupation  that 
gives  vitality  and  persuasive  power  to  the  cry  of  the 
new  gospel  of  agriculture,  "Back  to  the  soil." 

But  aside  from  the  fair  promises  and  growing  cer- 
tainties of  the  future  in  agriculture,  there  is  no  other 
calling  in  which  success  is  anything  like  so  nearly  cer- 
tain as  in  this.  Our  most  reliable  statisticians  estimated 
that  ninety-five  men  failed  where  five  succeeded  in  the 
pursuit  of  traffic  and  trade.  This  estimate  may  possibly 
be  too  high,  but  probably  it  is  close  to  the  facts. 
Failures  in  these  walks  of  life  are  so  frequent  and  con- 
stant that  they  would  seem  tragic  but  for  the  fact  that 
for  every  man  who  fails  another  immediately  takes  his 
place,  so  that  the  wreckage  is  continually  removed  from 
view  and  the  frightful  accumulation  of  it  is  prevented 
from  becoming  an  object  of  our  contemplation.  If  a 
dozen  men  attempt  to  do  business  in  merchandise  and 
make  money  in  a  community  which  can  support  only 
three,  it  is  certain  that  nine  out  of  the  twelve  will  fail. 


THE  NEW  CALL  TO  THE  FARM       111 

There  will  be  a  period  of  fierce  competition,  more  or  less 
prolonged  by  the  staying  qualities  of  the  men,  their 
financial  resources  and  power  of  will,  but  in  the  end 
nine  men  will  fail  and  must  fail.  But  you  may  double 
the  number  of  farmers  in  any  community  whatsoever 
without  dooming  one  of  them  to  failure  or  appreciably 
affecting  the  profits  which  any  one  of  them  may  reap  as 
the  reward  of  his  toil.  If  the  entire  body  of  business 
and  professional  men  who,  in  their  present  pursuits,  are 
barely  maintaining  an  existence — and  there  are  thou- 
sands of  them — should  betake  themselves  to  the  soU  to- 
morrow, the  calling  of  agriculture  would  not  be  less 
profitable  to  those  already  engaged  in  it,  while  the 
entire  population  of  the  country  would  doubtless  be 
greatly  blessed  and  benefited.  A  competent  business 
man  or  a  wide-awake  professional  man  may,  by  no  fault 
of  his  own,  be  starved  out  of  a  given  locality,  but 
probably  no  one  ever  heard  of  an  intelligent,  energetic, 
and  frugal  farmer  who  failed  to  make  a  comfortable 
living;  and,  unless  disabled  by  disease  or  accident,  such 
factors  have  usually  secured  for  him  who  exercised 
them  an  independent  income,  albeit,  perhaps,  a  modest 
one,  before  age  and  decrepitude  deprived  him  of  his 
ability  to  labor. 

To  whatever  extent  false  ideals  may  have  driven  out 
the  true  in  other  avenues  of  life,  however  widely  money 
and  power  may  have  come  to  be  accepted  as  the  most 
desirable  things  in  the  world,  and  however  high  the 
social  standing  attained  and  maintained  by  those  who 
in  the  pursuit  of  these  things  have  perjured  themselves 
and  robbed  and  ruined  their  fellows  under  forms  of  law 
whereby  they  are  saved  from  the  arrest,  trial,  and  im- 


112  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

prisonment  which  they  so  justly  deserve,  the  founda- 
tions of  God  stand  sure,  and  when  truth  is  lost  and 
honor  dies  the  man  is  dead.     The  young  doctor  must 
have  bread  and  is  often  tempted  to  the  practice  of  a 
quackery  he  despises,  and  which  at  the  beginning  must 
be  loathsome  to  him.     Later  in  life,  when  the  habit  has 
become  second  nature,  it  is  not  bread,  but  money,  more 
money,  which  constrains  him,  and  thus  his  character 
may  become  crystallized  into  a  hateful  form.    The  same 
process  may  operate  in  the  lawyer.   To  the  first  "dirty" 
professional  job,  he  may  drive  himself  against  all  his 
finer  feelings.     It  may  seem  to  him  a  necessity  that  he 
do  "this  thing."    The  second  job  will  be  less  distasteful, 
though  it  may  be  equally  "dirty,"  and  in  this  manner 
may  he  also  be  led  to  part  with  his  priceless  heritage  of 
honor.     These  observations  are  true  to  a  larger  or  less 
extent  of  every  line  of  gainful  endeavor,  with  but  one 
exception.    Where  they  occur  some  men  yield  not  at  all, 
some  yield  reluctantly,  and  still  others  are  made  ready 
by  heredity  to  perform  the  ignoble  and  the  mean;  but 
the  agriculturist,  so  far  as  his  dealing  is  with  the  soil, 
is  subject  to  none  of  these  temptations.    Here  integrity 
— absolute  honesty — is  his  sole  reliance.     He  deals  here 
with  Nature  and  her  laws  direct,  and  she  is  to  be  neither 
cheated  nor  befooled.    "Whatsoever  a  man  soweth,  that 
shall  he  also  reap,"  while  true  of  all  men  eventually,  is 
obviously  and  evidently  true  for  the  husbandman   at 
once.  When  he  seeks  to  dispose  of  that  which  he  has  har- 
vested, when  he  ceases  from  the  strict  work  of  the  agri- 
culturist and  becomes  a  tradesman,  there  may  then  come 
the  temptation  to  trickery ;  but  so  long  as  his  dealings 
are  with  the  soil,  instead  of  offering  the  slightest  induce- 


THE  NEW  CALL  TO  THE  FARM        113 

merit  to  substitute  one  thing  for  another  that  he  may 
reap  an  unearned  advantage,  he  finds  that  the  behests 
and  encouragements  of  Nature  are  all  and  always  on 
the  side  of  that  which  is  recognized  in  the  last  analysis 
to  be  most  worthy  in  man — truth,  righteousness,  and 
rectitude.  1 

There  is  probably  no  other  calling  which  is  so  con- 
ducive of  thoroughgoing  manliness  as  that  of  farm.ing.  i 
Nobody  expects  the  farmer  to  cringe  or  try  to  curry 
favor.  In  other  words,  he  is,  and  is  recognized  to  be, 
the  overlord  of  his  own  life.  He  is  never  tempted  to  hide 
his  opinions  in  the  hope  of  more  successfully  dealing 
with  his  fellow  men,  nor  is  he  fearful  that,  if  outspoken,  ; 
he  may  discount  his  prospects  of  prosperity.  He  may 
be  orthodox  or  heterodox  as  to  his  religion :  Republican, 
Democrat,  Prohibitionist,  or  Socialist  as  to  his  politics :  A\  * 
he  may  hold  and  teach  absolutely  any  sane  conviction 
at  which  he  has  arrived,  but  neither  Nature  with  whom 
he  deals  on  the  one  hand,  nor  the  markets  with  which 
he  has  to  do  on  the  other,  will  take  the  slightest  cog- 
nizance of  any  of  these  things.  Nature  asks  only  that 
he  be  intelligent  and  industrious ;  and  the  markets  only 
that  his  offerings  be  of  intrinsic  value.  Agriculture  is 
rapidly  coming  to  be  one  of  the  few  callings  in  which 
the  individual  man  may  be  himself,  think  and  express  his 
own  thoughts,  carry  out  his  own  policies,  shape  his  own 
life,  and  wield  with  his  might  all  the  powers  that  he  feels 
lie  latent  within  him.  In  almost  every  other  vocation  in 
life  the  man  is  hampered  and  hindered  and  perhaps 
denied  the  exercise  of  his  most  profound  convictions.  If 
the  place  he  occupies  is  an  humble  one,  so  much  the 
worse;  but  even  though  he  occupy  an  exalted  position 


114  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

which  carries  with  it  large  remuneration,  he  finds  always 
in  attempting  to  carry  out  his  policies,  however  vital  he 
may  feel  these  policies  to  be,  that  there  are  other  men, 
equals,  in  the  employ  of  the  same  company,  superiors, 
possibly,  who  must  be  consulted  and  argued  with ;  that 
often  his  desires,  his  strong  convictions  even,  must  be 
shaped  and  shorn,  and  not  unfrequently  that  they  are 
entirely  aborted.  Jealousies  are  ever  present  to  defeat 
his  ends  and  embitter  his  life.  Presidents  and  vice- 
presidents  of  great  corporations  are  often  under  the 
restraint  of  influential  stockholders.  In  political  life 
it  is  even  worse.  High  officers,  governors  of  states,  and 
mayors  of  great  cities  must  frequently  be  deaf  to  the 
reasonable  complaints  of  a  long-suffering  public,  stifling 
at  the  same  time  their  own  personal  convictions,  and  be 
blind  to  the  misdeeds  of  the  heads  of  departments  who 
are  ostensibly  subject  to,  but  are  in  fact  contemptuously 
independent  of,  the  chief  executive.  He  must  all  too 
frequently  grovel  to  his  political  boss  and  stand  before 
the  people  as  in  the  plentitude  of  power  while  sub- 
mitting to  the  most  humiliating  dictation  from  the  rear. 
Who  shall  say  to  the  farmer,  "Plant  this  field  with 
corn"  when  in  his  judgment  it  should  be  planted  with 
some  other  grain,  or  should  not  be  planted  at  all?  Who 
may  dictate  to  him  in  any  other  particular?  He  may 
be  proudly  aware  that  no  one  expects  him  to  confess 
any  creed  or  maintain  any  view  that  is  not  in  accordance 
with  his  deepest  convictions.  Nor  has  he  to  yield  to  the 
opinions  or  to  defer  to  the  prejudices  or  placate  the 
jealousies  of  any  man  or  of  any  set  of  men,  save  only 
as  the  spirit  of  a  broad  humanity  may  lead  him  in  the 
paths  of  peace.     His  tolerance  and  self-restraint  may 


THE  NEW  CALL  TO  THE  FARM       115 

be  exercised  without  the  sacrifice  of  a  jot  or  tittle  of  liis 
self-respect,  without  the  impairment  of  his  dignity  or 
the  deprivation  of  the  consciousness  that  he  is  essen- 
tially a  gentleman. 

There  is  not  a  section  of  the  broad  land  which  does 
not  to-day  offer  its  own  particular  inducements  to  tlic 
agriculturist.  The  middle  North,  while  still  wonderfully 
attractive,  no  longer  holds  a  monopoly  of  good  things, 
either  in  lands  or  produce.  There  are  farming  oppor- 
tunities in  the  East  which  are  as  attractive  to-day  as 
the  West  offered  twenty-five  years  ago.  The  South  is  a 
veritable  Promised  Land.  The  stories  of  the  Far  West 
and  Northwest  seem  romantic  in  spite  of  their  known 
truth  and  soberness. 

It  is  the  new  era  in  agriculture  that  has  rendered 
possible  the  reaping  from  the  farms  of  this  country  tlic 
unthinkable  sum  of  six  and  one  half  billions  of  dollars 
within  the  year.  These  profits,  even  distributed  through- 
out the  farming  population,  are  rapidly  making  for  a 
condition  of  well-being  unsurpassed  by  any  other  class 
of  the  citizenship.  The  social  life  of  the  farm  is  im- 
measurably more  attractive  than  ever  before,  and  the 
improved  school  facilities,  the  labor-saving  machinery, 
the  rural  delivery  of  mails,  the  fine  roads,  the  county 
and  inter-county  telephone  lines  are  daily  adding  to  the 
enticing  features  of  the  farmer's  life. 


X 

THE  PROBLEMS  OF  PROGRESS  * 

IVENYON  L.   BUTTERFIELD 

It  is  impossible  to  acquire  a  keen  and  permanent 
interest  in  the  rural  problem  unless  one  first  of  all  is 
cognizant  of  its  significance.  And  lack  of  knowledge  at 
this  point  may  in  part  account  for  the  fact  already 
alluded  to  that  in  America  the  farm  problem  has  not 
been  adequately  studied.  So  stupendous  has  been  the 
development  of  our  manufacturing  industries,  so  mar- 
velous the  growth  of  our  urban  population,  so  pressing 
the  questions  raised  by  modern  city  life,  that  the  social 
and  economic  interests  of  the  American  farmer  have,  as 
a  rule,  received  minor  consideration.  We  are  impressed 
with  the  rise  of  cities  like  Chicago,  forgetting  for  the 
moment  that  half  of  the  American  people  still  live  under 
rural  conditions.  We  are  perplexed  by  the  labor  wars 
that  are  waged  about  us,  for  the  time  unmindful  that 
one  third  of  the  workers  of  this  country  make  their 
living  immediately  from  the  soil.  We  are  astounded, 
and  perhaps  alarmed,  at  the  great  centralization  of 
capital,  possibly  not  realizing  that  the  capital  invested 
in  agriculture  in  the  United  States  nearly  equals  the 
combined  capital  invested  in  the  manufacturing  and 
railway  industries.     But  if  we  pause  to  consider  the 

*  From  "Chapters  in  Rural  Progress,"  by  permission  of  the  publishers, 
University  of  Chicago  Press. 

116 


THE  PROBLEMS  OF  PROGRESS         117 

scope  and  nature  of  the  economic  and  social  interests 
involved,  we  cannot  avoid  the  conclusion  that  the  farm 
problem  is  worthy  of  serious  thought  from  students  of 
our  national  welfare. 

We  are  aware  that  agriculture  does  not  hold  the  same 
relative  rank  among  our  industries  that  it  did  in  former 
years,  and  that  our  city  population  has  increased  far 
more  rapidly  than  has  our  rural  population.  We  do 
not  ignore  the  fact  that  urban  industries  are  developing 
more  rapidly  than  is  agriculture,  nor  deny  the  serious- 
ness of  the  actual  depletion  of  rural  population,  and 
even  of  community  decadence,  in  some  portions  of  the 
Union.  But  these  facts  merely  add  to  the  importance 
of  the  farm  question.  And  it  should  not  be  forgotten 
that  there  has  been  a  large  and  constant  growth  both 
of  our  agricultural  wealth  and  of  our  rural  population. 
During  the  last  half-century  there  was  a  gain  of  500 
per  cent,  in  the  value  of  farm  property,  while  the  non- 
ur^ban  population  increased  250  per  cent.  Agriculture 
has  been  one  of  the  chief  elements  of  America's  indus- 
trial greatness,  it  is  still  our  dominant  economic  inter- 
est, and  it  will  long  remain  at  least  a  leading  industry. 
The  people  of  the  farm  have  furnished  a  sturdy  citizen- 
ship and  have  been  the  primary  source  of  much  of  our 
best  leadership  in  political,  business,  and  professional 
life.  For  an  indefinite  future,  a  large  proportion  of 
the  American  people  will  continue  to  live  in  a  rural 
environment. 

Current  agricultural  discussion  would  lead  us  to 
think  that  the  farm  problem  is  largely  one  of  technicjue. 
The  possibilities  of  the  agricultural  industry,  in  the 
light   of   applied    science,    emphasize    the   need    of   the 


118  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

farmer  for  more  complete  knowledge  of  soil  and  plant 
and  animal,  and  for  increased  proficiency  in  utilizing 
this  knowledge  to  secure  greater  production  at  less  cost. 
This  is  a  fundamental  need.  It  lies  at  the  basis  of 
success  in  farming.     But  it  is  not  the  farm  problem. 

Business  skill  must  be  added,  business  methods  en- 
forced. The  farmer  must  be  not  only  a  more  skilful 
produce-grower,  but  also  a  keener  produce-seller.  But 
the  moment  we  enter  the  realm  of  the  market  we  step 
outside  the  individualistic  aspect  of  the  problem  as  em- 
bodied in  the  current  doctrine  of  technical  agricultural 
teaching,  and  are  forced  to  consider  the  social  aspect  as 
emphasized,  first  of  all,  in  the  economic  category  of 
price.  Here  we  find  many  factors — transportation  cost, 
general  market  conditions  at  home  and  abroad,  the 
status  of  other  industries,  and  even  legislative  activities. 
The  farm  problem  becomes  an  industrial  question,  not 
solely  one  of  technical  and  business  skill.  Moreover,  the 
problem  is  one  of  a  successful  industry  as  a  whole,  not 
merely  the  personal  successes  of  even  a  respectable 
number  of  individual  farmers.  The  farming  class  must 
progress  as  a  unit. 

But  have  we  yet  reached  the  heart  of  the  question.'' 
Is  the  farm  problem  one  of  technique  plus  business  skill, 
plus  these  broad  economic  considerations?  Is  it  not 
perfectly  possible  that  agriculture  as  an  industry  may 
remain  in  a  fairly  satisfactory  condition,  and  yet  the 
farming  class  fail  to  maintain  its  status  in  the  general 
social  order?  Is  it  not,  for  instance,  quite  within  the 
bounds  of  probability  to  imagine  a  good  degree  of 
economic  strength  in  the  agricultural  industry  existing 
side  by  side  with  either  a  peasant  regime  or  a  landlord- 


THE  PROBLEMS  OF  PROGRESS         119 

and- tenant  system?  Yet  would  we  expect  from  either 
system  the  same  social  fruitage  that  has  been  har- 
vested from  our  American  yeomanry? 

We  conclude,  then,  that  the  farm  problem  consists  in 
maintaining  upon  our  farms  a  class  of  people  mho  have 
succeeded  in  procuring  for  themselves  the  highest  pos- 
sible class  status,  not  only  in  the  industrial,  but  in  the  ■ 
political  and  the  social  order — a  relative  status,  more-  j 
over,  that  is  measured  by  the  demands  of  American  j 
ideals.    The  farm  problem  thus  connects  itself  with  the  | 
whole  question  of  democratic  civilization.     This  is  not 
mere  platitude.      For  we   cannot  properly   judge   the 
significance  and  the  relation  of  the  different  industrial 
activities  of  our  farmers,  and  especially  the  value  of  j 
the  various  social  agencies  for  rural  betterment,  except 
by  the  standard  of  class  status.     It  is  here  that  we 
seem  to  find  the  only  satisfactory  philosophy  of  rural 
progress. 

We  would  not  for  a  moment  discredit  the  funda- 
mental importance  of  movements  that  have  for  their 
purpose  the  improved  technical  skill  of  our  farmers, 
better  business  management  of  the  farm,  and  wiser 
study  and  control  of  market  conditions.  Indeed,  we 
would  call  attention  to  the  fact  that  social  institutions 
are  absolutely  necessary  means  of  securing  these  essen- 
tial factors  of  industrial  success.  In  the  solution  of  the 
farm  problem  we  must  deliberately  invoke  the  influence 
of  quickened  means  of  communication,  of  cooperation 
among  farmers,  of  various  means  of  education,  and  pos- 
sibly even  of  religious  institutions,  to  stimulate  and 
direct  industrial  activity.  What  needs  present  emphasis 
is  the  fact  that  there  is  a  definite,  real,  social  end  to  be 


120  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

held  in  view  as  the  goal  of  rural  endeavor.  The  highest 
possible  social  status  for  the  farming  class  is  that  end. 

We  may  now,  as  briefly  as  possible,  describe  some  of 
the  difficulties  that  lie  in  the  path  of  the  farmers  in  their 
ambition  to  attain  greater  class  efficiency  and  larger 
class  influence,  and  some  of  the  means  at  hand  for 
minimizing  the  difficulties.  A  complete  discussion  of 
the  farm  problem  should,  of  course,  include  thorough 
consideration  of  the  technical,  the  business,  and  the 
economic  questions  implied  by  the  struggle  for  indus- 
trial success ;  for  industrial  success  is  prerequisite  to 
the  achievement  of  the  greatest  social  power  of  the 
farming  class.  But  we  shall  consider  only  the  social 
aspects  of  the  problem. 

Perhaps  the  one  great  underlying  social  difficulty 
among  American  farmers  is  their  comparatively  isolated 
mode  of  life.  The  farmer's  family  is  isolated  from  other 
families.  A  small  city  of  perhaps  twenty  thousand 
population  will  contain  from  four  hundred  to  six  hun- 
dred families  per  square  mile,  whereas  a  typical  agri- 
cultural community  in  a  prosperous  agricultural  state 
will  "hardly  average  more  than  ten  families  per  square 
mile.  The  farming  class  is  isolated  from  other  classes. 
Farmers,  of  course,  mingle  considerably  in  a  business 
and  political  way  with  the  men  of  their  trading  town 
and  county  seat ;  but,  broadly  speaking,  farmers  do  not 
associate  freely  with  people  living  under  urban  con- 
ditions and  possessing  other  than  the  rural  point  of 
view.  It  would  be  venturesome  to  suggest  very  definite 
generalizations  with  respect  to  the  precise  influence  of 
these  conditions,  because,  so  far  as  the  writer  is  aware, 
the  psychology  of  isolation  has  not  been  worked  out. 


THE  PROBLEMS  OF  PROGRESS         121 

But  two  or  three  conclusions  seem  to  be  admissible,  and 
for  that  matter  rather  generally  accepted. 

The  well-known  conservatism  of  the  farming  class  is 
doubtless  largely  due  to  class  isolation.  Habits,  ideas, 
traditions,  and  ideals  have  long  life  in  the  rural  com- 
munity. Changes  come  slowly.  There  is  a  tendency  to 
tread  the  well-worn  paths.  The  farmer  does  not  easily 
keep  in  touch  with  rapid  modern  development,  unless  . 
the  movements  or  methods  directly  affect  him.  Phys-  1 
ical  agencies  which  improve  social  conditions,  such  as 
electric  lights,  telephones,  and  pavements,  come  to  the 
city  first.  The  atmosphere  of  the  country  speaks  peace 
and  quiet.  Nature's  routine  of  sunshine  and  storm,  of 
summer  and  winter,  encourages  routine  and  repetition 
in  the  man  who  works  with  her. 

A  complement  of  this  rural  conservatism,  which  at 
first  thought  seems  a  paradox,  but  which  probably 
grows  out  of  these  same  conditions  of  isolation,  is  the 
intense  radicalism  of  a  rural  community  when  once  it 
breaks  away  from  its  moorings.  Many  farmers  are  un- 
duly suspicious  of  others'  motives ;  yet  the  same  people 
often  succumb  to  the  wiles  of  the  charlatan,  whether 
medical  or  political.  Farmers  are  usually  conservative 
in  politics  and  intensely  loyal  to  party ;  but  the  Populist 
movement  indicates  the  tendency  to  extremes  when  the 
old  allegiance  is  left  behind.  Old  methods  of  farming 
may  be  found  alongside  ill-considered  attempts  to  raise 
new  crops  or  to  utilize  untried  machines. 

Other  effects  of  rural  isolation  are  seen  in  a  class 
provincialism  that  is  hard  to  eradicate,  and  in  the  de- 
velopment of  minds  less  alert  to  seize  business  ad- 
vantages and  less  far-sighted  than  are  developed  by  the 


122  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

intense  industrial  life  of  the  town.  There  is  time  to 
brood  over  wrongs,  real  and  imaginary.  Personal 
prejudices  often  grow  to  be  rank  and  coarse-fibered. 
Neighborhood  feuds  are  not  uncommon  and  are  often 
virulent.  Leadership  is  made  difficult  and  sometimes 
impossible.  It  is  easy  to  fall  into  personal  habits  that 
may  mark  off  the  farmer  from  other  classes  of  similar 
intelligence,  and  that  bar  him  from  his  rightful  social 
place. 

It  would,  however,  be  distinctly  unfair  to  the  farm 
community  if  we  did  not  emphasize  some  of  the  ad- 
vantages that  grow  out  of  the  rural  mode  of  life.  Farm- 
ers have  time  to  think,  and  the  typical  American 
farmer  is  a  man  who  has  thought  much  and  often 
deeply.  A  spirit  of  sturdy  independence  is  generated, 
and  freedom  of  will  and  of  action  is  encouraged.  Family 
life  is  nowhere  so  educative  as  in  the  country.  The 
whole  family  cooperates  for  common  ends,  and  in  its 
individual  members  are  bred  the  qualities  of  industry, 
patience,  and  perseverance.  The  manual  work  of  the 
schools  is  but  a  makeshift  for  the  old-fashioned  train- 
ing of  the  country-grown  boy.  Country  life  is  an  ad- 
mirable preparation  for  the  modern  industrial  and  pro- 
fessional career. 

'  Nevertheless,  rural  isolation  is  a  real  evil.  Present- 
day  living  is  so  distinctively  social,  progress  is  so  de- 
pendent upon  social  agencies,  social  development  is  so 
rapid,  that  if  the  farmer  Is  to  keep  his  status  he  must 
be  fully  in  step  with  the  rest  of  the  army.  He  must 
secure  the  social  viewpoint.  The  disadvantages  of 
rural  Isolation  are  largely  In  the  realm  of  the  social 
relations,  its  advantages  mostly  on  the  individual  and 


THE  PROBLEMS  OE  PROGRESS         123 

moral  side.     Earm  life  makes  a  strong  individual ;  it  is 
a  serious  menace  to  the  achievement  of  class  power. 

A  cure  for  isolation  sometimes  suggested  is  tlie 
gathering  of  the  farmers  into  villages.  This  remedy, 
however,  is  of  doubtful  value.  In  the  first  place,  the 
scheme  is  not  immediately  practicable.  About  three 
and  one  half  billions  of  dollars  are  now  invested  in  farm 
buildings,  and  it  will  require  some  motive  more  powerful 
than  that  inspired  by  academic  logic  to  transfer,  even 
gradually,  this  investment  to  village  groups.  More- 
over, it  is  possible  to  dispute  the  desirability  of  the 
remedy.  The  farm  village  at  best  must  be  a  mere 
hamlet.  It  can  secure  for  the  farmer  very  few  of  the 
urban  advantages  he  may  want,  except  that  of  per- 
mitting closer  daily  intercourse  between  families.  And 
it  is  questionable  if  the  pett}'  society  of  such  a  village 
can  compensate  for  the  freedom  and  purity  of  rural 
family  life  now  existing.  It  may  even  be  asserted  with 
some  degree  of  positivencss  that  the  small  village,  on 
the  moral  and  intellectual  sides,  is  distinctly  inferior 
to  the  isolated  farm  home. 

At  the  present  time  rural  isolation  in  America  is 
being  overcome  by  the  development  of  better  means  of 
communication  among  farmers  who  still  live  on  their 
Tarms.  So  successful  are  these  means  of  communicationi- 
proving  that  we  cannot  avoid  the  conclusion  that  herein 
lies  the  remedy.  Improved  wagon  roads,  the  rural  free 
mail  (delivery,  the  farm  telephone,  trolley  lines  through 
country  districts,  are  bringing  about  a  positive  revolu- 
tion in  country  living.  They  are  curing  the  evils  of 
isolation,  without  in  the  slightest  degree  robbing  the 
farm  of  its  manifest  advantages  for  family  life.     The 


124  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

farmers  are  being  welded  into  a  more  compact  society. 
They  are  being  nurtured  to  greater  alertness  of  mind, 
to  greater  keenness  of  observation,  and  the  foundations 
are  being  laid  for  vastly  enlarged  social  activities.  The 
problem  now  is  to  extend  these  advantages  to  every 
rural  community — in  itself  a  task  of  huge  proportions. 
If  this  can  be  done  and  isolation  can  be  reduced  to  a 
minimum,  the  solution  of  all  the  other  rural  social 
problems  will  become  vastly  easier. 

Organization  is  one  of  the  pressing  social  problems 
that  American  farmers  have  to  face.  The  importance 
of  the  question  is  intrinsic,  because  of  the  general  social 
necessity  for  cooperation  which  characterizes  modern 
life.  Society  is  becoming  consciously  self-directive. 
The  immediate  phase  of  this  growing  self-direction  lies 
in  the  attempts  of  various  social  groups  to  organize 
their  powers  for  group  advantage.  And  if,  as  seems 
probable,  this  group  activity  Is  to  remain  a  dominant 
feature  of  social  progress,  even  in  a  fairly  coherent 
society,  it  Is  manifest  that  there  will  result  more  or  less 
of  competition  among  groups. 

The  farming  class,  If  at  all  ambitious  for  group  In- 
fluence, can  hardly  avoid  this  tendency  to  organization. 
Farmers,  indeed  more  than  any  other  class,  need  to  or- 
ganize. Their  Isolation  makes  thorough  organization 
especially  Imperative.  And  the  argument  for  cooper- 
ation gains  force  from  the  fact  that  relatively  the  agri- 
cultural population  is  declining.  In  the  old  days  farm- 
ers ruled  because  of  mere  mass.  That  is  no  longer 
possible.  The  naive  statement  that  "farmers  must  or- 
ganize because  other  classes  are  organizing"  Is  really 
good  social  philosophy. 


THE  PROBLEMS  OF  PROGRESS         125 

In  the  group  competition  just  referred  to  there  is  a 
tendency  for  class  interests  to  be  put  above  general 
social  welfare.  This  is  a  danger  to  be  avoided  in  or- 
ganization, not  an  argument  against  it.  So  the  farmers' 
organization  should  be  guarded,  at  this  point,  by  ad- 
herence to  the  principle  that  organization  must  not  only 
develop  class  power,  but  must  be  so  directed  as  to  permit 
the  farmers  to  lend  the  full  strength  of  their  class  to 
general  social  progress. 

Organization  thus  becomes  a  test  of  class  efficiency, 
and  consequently  a  prerequisite  for  solving  the  farm 
problem.  Can  the  farming  class  secure  and  maintain  a 
fairly  complete  organization?  Can  it  develop  efficient 
leaders  ?  Can  it  announce,  in  sound  terms,  its  proposed 
group  policy?  Can  it  lend  the  group  influence  to 
genuine  social  progress?  If  so,  the  organization  of 
farmers  becomes  a  movement  of  preeminent  importance. 

Organization,  moreover,  is  a  powerful  educational 
force.  It  arouses  discussion  of  fundamental  questions, 
diffuses  knowledge,  gives  practice  in  public  affairs, 
trains  individuals  in  executive  work,  and  in  fine,  stim- 
ulates, as  nothing  else  can,  a  class  which  is  in  special 
need  of  social  incentive. 

Organization  is,  however,  difficult  of  accomplishment. 
While  it  would  take  us  too  far  afield  to  discuss  the  his- 
tory of  farmers'  organizations  in  America,  we  may 
briefly  suggest  some  of  the  difficulties  involved.  For 
forty  years  the  question  has  been  a  prominent  one 
among  the  farmers,  and  these  years  have  seen  the  rise 
and  decline  of  several  large  associations.  There  have 
been  apparently  two  great  factors  contributing  to  the 
downfall  of  these  organizations.     The  first  was  a  mis- 


126  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

apprehension,  on  the  part  of  the  farmers,  of  the  feasihil- 
ity  of  organizing  themselves  as  a  poHtical  phalanx ;  the 
second,  a  sentimental  belief  in  the  possibilities  of  busi- 
ness cooperation  among  farmers,  more  especially  in 
lines  outside  their  vocation.  There  is  no  place  for  class 
politics  in  America.  There  are  some  things  legislation 
cannot  cure.  There  are  serious  limitations  to  cooper- 
ative endeavor.  It  took  many  hard  experiences  for  our 
farmers  to  learn  these  truths.  But  back  of  all  lie  some 
inherent  difficulties,  as,  for  instance,  the  number  of 
people  involved,  their  isolation,  sectional  interests,  in- 
grained habits  of  independent  action,  of  individual 
initiative,  of  suspicion  of  others'  motives.  There  is 
often  lack  of  pei-spective,  and  unwillingness  to  invest  in 
a  procedure  that  does  not  promise  immediate  returns. 
The  mere  fact  of  failure  has  discredited  the  organiza- 
tion idea.  There  is  lack  of  leadership ;  for  the  farm  in- 
dustry, while  it  often  produces  men  of  strong  mind, 
keen  perception,  resolute  will,  does  not,  as  a  rule,  de- 
velop executive  capacity  for  large  enterprises. 

It  is  frequently  asserted  that  farmers  are  the  only 
class  that  has  not  organized.  This  is  not  strictly  true. 
The  difficulties  enumerated  are  real  difficulties  and  have 
seriously  retarded  farm  organization.  But  if  the 
progress  made  is  not  satisfactory,  it  is  at  least  encour- 
aging. On  the  purely  business  side,  over  five  thousand 
cooperative  societies  among  American  farmers  have 
been  reported.  In  cooperative  buying  of  supplies, 
cooperative  selling  of  products,  and  cooperative  insur- 
ance, the  volume  of  transactions  reaches  large  figures. 
A  host  of  societies  of  a  purely  educational  nature  exists 
among  stock-breeders,  fruit-growers,  dairymen.     It  is 


THE  PROBLEMS  OF  PROGRESS    127 

true  that  no  one  general  organization  of  farmers,  em- 
bracing a  large  proportion  of  the  class,  has  as  yet  been 
perfected.  The  nearest  approach  to  it  is  the  Grange, 
which,  contrary  to  a  popular  notion,  is  in  a  prosperous 
condition,  with  a  really  large  influence  upon  the  social, 
financial,  educational,  and  legislative  interests  of  the 
farming  class.  It  has  had  a  steady  growth  during  the 
past  ten  years,  and  is  a  quiet  'but  powerful  factor  in 
rural  progress.  The  Grange  is  perhaps  too  conserva- 
tive in  its  administrative  policy.  It  has  not  at  least 
succeeded  in  converting  to  its  fold  the  farmers  of  the 
great  Mississippi  Valley.  But  it  has  workable  ma- 
chinery, it  disavows  partisan  politics  and  selfish  class 
interests,  and  it  subordinates  financial  benefits,  while 
emphasizing  educational  and  broadly  political  ad- 
vantages. It  seems  fair  to  interpret  the  principles  of 
the  Grange  as  wholly  in  line  with  the  premise  of  this 
paper,  that  the  farmers  need  to  preserve  their  status, 
politically,  industrially,  and  socially,  and  that  organi- 
zation is  one  of  the  fundamental  methods  they  must  use. 
The  Grange,  therefore,  deserves  to  succeed,  and  indeed 
is    succeeding. 

The  field  of  agricultural  organization  is  an  extensive 
one.  But  if  the  farm  problem  is  to  be  solved  satisfac- 
torily, the  American  farmers  must  first  secure  reason- 
ably complete  organization. 

It  is  hardly  necessary  to  assert  that  the  education  of 
that  portion  of  the  American  people  who  live  upon  the 
land  involves  a  question  of  the  greatest  significance. 
The  subject  naturally  divides  itself  into  two  phases, 
one  of  which  may  be  designated  as  rural  education 
proper,   the   other   as   agricultural  education.     Rural 


128  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

education  has  to  do  with  the  education  of  people,  more 
especially  of  the  young,  who  live  under  rural  con- 
ditions ;  agricultural  education  aims  to  prepare  men 
and  women  for  the  specific  vocation  of  agriculture. 
The  rural  school  typifies  the  first ;  the  agricultural 
school  the  second.  Rural  education  is  but  a  section  of 
the  general  school  question ;  agricultural  education  is  a 
branch  of  technical  training.  These  two  phases  of  the 
education  of  the  farm  population  meet  at  many  points, 
they  must  work  in  harmony,  and  together  they  form  a 
distinct  educational  problem. 

The  serious  difficulties  in  the  rural  school  question 
are  perhaps  three:  first,  to  secure  a  modern  school,  in 
efficiency  somewhat  comparable  to  the  town  school, 
without  unduly  increasing  the  school  tax ;  second,  so  to 
enrich  the  carriculum  and  so  to  expand  the  functions 
of  the  school  that  the  school  shall  become  a  vital  and 
coherent  part  of  the  community  life,  on  the  one  hand 
translating  the  rural  environment  into  terms  of  charac- 
ter and  mental  efficiency,  and  on  the  other  hand  serving 
perfectly  as  a  stepping-stone  to  the  city  schools  and 
to  urban  careers ;  third,  to  provide  adequate  high- 
school  facilities  in  the  rural  community. 

The  centralization  of  district  schools  and  the  trans- 
portation of  pupils  will  probably  prove  to  be  more 
nearly  a  solution  of  all  these  difficulties  than  will  any 
other  one  scheme.  The  plan  permits  the  payment  of 
higher  wages  for  teachers  and  ought  to  secure  better 
instruction ;  it  permits  the  employment  of  special 
teachers,  as  for  nature-study  or  agriculture;  it  in- 
creases the  efficiency  of  superintendence ;  it  costs  but 
little,  if  any,  more  than  the  district  system;  it  leaves 


THE  PROBLEMS  OF  PROGRESS         129 

the  school  amid  rural  surroundings,  while  introducing 
into  the  schoolroom  itself  a  larger  volume,  so  to  speak, 
of  world-atmosphere;  it  contains  possibilities  for  com- 
munity service;  it  can  easily  be  expanded  into  a  high 
school  of  reputable  grade. 

There  are  two  dangers,  both  somewhat  grave,  likely 
to  arise  from  an  urgent  campaign  for  centralization. 
Even  if  the  movement  makes  as  great  progress  as  could 
reasonably  be  expected,  for  a  generation  to  come  a  large 
share,  if  not  a  major  portion,  of  rural  pupils  will  still 
be  taught  in  the  small,  isolated,  district  school;  there 
is  danger  that  this  district  school  maj'^  be  neglected. 
Moreover,  increased  school  machinery  always  invites 
undue  reliance  upon  machine-like  methods.  Centraliza- 
tion permits,  but  does  not  guarantee,  greater  efficiency. 
A  system  like  this  one  must  be  vitalized  by  constant  and 
close  touch  with  the  life  and  needs  and  aspirations  of 
the  rural  community  itself. 

Whenever  centralization  is  not  adopted,  the  consoli- 
dation of  two  or  three  schools — a  modified  form  of 
centralization — may  prove  helpful.  Where  the  district 
school  still  persists,  there  are  one  or  two  imperative  re- 
quirements. Teachers  must  have  considerably  higher 
wages  and  longer  tenure.  There  must  be  more  efficient 
supervision.  The  state  must  assist  in  supporting  the 
school,  although  only  in  part.  The  small  schools  must 
be  correlated  with  some  form  of  high  school.  The  last 
point  is  of  great  importance  because  of  the  comparative 
absence  in  country  communities  of  opportunity  near  at 
hand  for  good  high-school  training. 

Agricultural  education  is  distinctively  technical,  not 
in  the  restricted  sense  of  mere  technique,  or  even  of 


130  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

applied  science,  but  in  the  sense  that  it  must  be  frankly 
vocational.  It  has  to  do  with  the  preparation  of  men 
and  women  for  the  business  of  farming  and  for  life  in 
the  rural  community. 

Agricultural  education  should  begin  in  the  primary 
school.  In  this  school  the  point  of  view,  however,  should 
be  broadly  pedagogical  rather  than  immediately  voca- 
tional. Fortunately,  the  wise  teaching  of  nature-study, 
the  training  of  pupils  to  know  and  to  love  nature,  the 
constant  illustrations  from  the  rural  environment,  the 
continual  appeal  to  personal  observation  and  experi- 
ence, absolute  loyalty  to  the  farm  point  of  view,  are 
not  only  sound  pedagogy,  but  form  the  best  possible 
background  for  future  vocational  study.  Whether 
we  call  this  early  work  "nature-study"  or  call  it 
"agriculture"  matters  less  than  that  the  fundamental 
principle  be  recognized.  It  must  first  of  all  educate. 
The  greatest  difficulty  in  introducing  such  work  into 
the  primary  school  is  to  secure  properly  equipped 
teachers. 

Perhaps  the  most  stupendous  undertaking  in  agri- 
cultural education  is  the  adequate  development  of  sec- 
ondary education  in  agriculture.  The  overwhelming 
majority  of  young  people  who  secure  any  agricultural 
schooling  whatever  must  get  it  in  institutions  that 
academically  are  of  secondary  grade.  This  is  a  huge 
task.  If  developed  to  supply  existing  needs,  it  will  call 
for  an  enormous  expenditure  of  money  and  for  the 
most  careful  planning.  From  the  teaching  viewpoint 
it  is  a  difficult  problem.  Modern  agriculture  is  based 
upon  the  sciences ;  it  will  not  do,  therefore,  to  establish 
schools  in  the  mere  art  of  farming.     But  these  agri- 


THE  PROBLEMS  OF  PROGRESS         131 

cultural  high  schools  must  deal  with  pupils  who  are 
comparatively  immature,  and  who  almost  invariably 
have  had  no  preparation  in  science.  Nor  should  the 
courses  at  these  schools  be  ultra-technical.  They  are  to 
prepare  men  and  women  for  life  on  the  farm — men  and 
women  who  are  to  lead  in  rural  development,  and  who 
must  get  some  inkling  at  least  of  the  real  farm  question 
and  its  solution.  The  agricultural  school,  therefore, 
presents  a  problem  of  great  difficulty. 

A  perennial  question  in  agricultural  education  is : 
What  is  the  function  of  the  agricultural  college.'^  We 
have  not  time  to  trace  the  history  of  these  colleges,  nor 
to  elaborate  the  various  views  relative  to  their  mission. 
But*  let  us  for  a  moment  discuss  their  proper  function 
in  the  light  of  the  proposition  that  the  preservation  of 
the  farmers'  status  is  the  real  farm  problem ;  for  the 
college  can  be  justified  only  as  it  finds  its  place  among 
the  social  agencies  helpful  in  the  solution  of  the  farm 
question. 

In  so  far  as  the  agricultural  college,  through  its  ex- 
periment station  or  otherwise,  is  an  organ  of  research, 
it  should  carry  its  investigations  into  the  economic  and 
sociological  fields,  as  well  as  pursue  experiments  in  soil 
fertility  and  animal  nutrition. 

In  the  teaching  of  students,  the  agricultural  college 
will  continue  the  important  work  of  training  men  for 
agricultural  research,  agricultural  teaching,  and  expert 
supervision  of  various  agricultural  enterprises.  But 
the  college  should  put  renewed  emphasis  upon  its  abil- 
ity to  send  well-trained  men  to  the  farms,  there  to  live 
their  lives,  there  to  find  their  careers,  and  there  to  lead 
in  the  movements  for  rural  progress.     A  decade  ago  it 


132  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

was  not  easy  to  find  colleges  which  believed  that  this 
could  be  done,  and  some  agricultural  educators  have 
even  disavowed  such  a  purpose  as  a  proper  object  of 
the  colleges.  But  the  strongest  agricultural  colleges  to- 
day have  pride  in  just  such  a  purpose.  And  why  not? 
We  not  only  need  men  thus  trained  as  leaders  in  every 
rural  community,  but,  if  the  farming  business  cannot  be 
made  to  offer  a  career  to  a  reasonable  number  of  college- 
trained  men,  it  is  a  sure  sign  that  only  by  the  most 
herculean  efforts  can  the  farmers  maintain  their  status 
as  a  class.  If  agriculture  must  be  turned  over  wholl}"^ 
to  the  untrained  and  to  the  half-trained,  if  it  cannot 
satisfy  the  ambition  of  strong,  well-educated  men  and 
women,  its  future,  from  the  social  point  of  view,  is  in- 
deed gloomy. 

The  present-day  course  of  study  in  the  agricultural 
college  does  not,  however,  fully  meet  this  demand  for 
rural  leadership.  The  farm  problem  has  been  regarded 
as  a  technical  question,  and  a  technical  training  has 
been  offered  the  student.  The  agricultural  college, 
therefore,  needs  "socializing."  Agricultural  economics 
and  rural  sociology  should  occupy  a  large  place  in  the 
curriculum.  The  men  who  go  from  the  college  to  the 
farm  should  appreciate  the  significance  of  the  agricul- 
tural question,  and  should  be  trained  to  organize  their 
forces  for  genuine  rural  progress.  The  college  should, 
as  far  as  possible,  become  the  leader  in  the  whole  move- 
ment for  solving  the  farm  problem. 

The  farm  home  has  not  come  in  for  its  share  of  at- 
tention in  existing  schemes  of  agricultural  education. 
The  kitchen  and  the  dining-room  have  as  much  to  gain 
from  science  as  have  the  dairy  and  the  orchard.     The 


THE  PROBLEMS  OF  PROGRESS         133 

inspiration  of  vocational  knowledge  must  be  the  posses- 
sion of  her  who  is  the  entrepreneur  of  the  family,  the 
home-maker.  The  agricultural  colleges  through  their 
departments  of  domestic  science — better,  of  "home- 
making" — should  inaugurate  a  comprehensive  move- 
ment for  carrying  to  the  farm  home  a  larger  measure 
of  the  advantages  which  modern  science  is  showering 
upon  humanity. 

The  agricultural  college  must  also  lead  in  a  more 
adequate  development  of  extension  teaching.  Magnifi- 
cent work  has  already  been  done  through  farmers' 
institutes,  reading  courses,  cooperative  experiments, 
demonstrations,  and  correspondence.  But  the  field  is 
so  immense,  the  number  of  people  involved  so  enormous, 
the  difficulties  of  reaching  them  so  many,  that  it  offers  a 
genuine  problem,  and  one  of  peculiar  significance,  not 
only  because  of  the  generally  recognized  need  of  adult 
education,  but  also  because  of  the  isolation  of  the 
farmers. 

It  should  be  said  that  in  no  line  of  rural  betterment 
has  so  much  progress  been  made  in  America  as  in  agri- 
cultural education.  Merely  to  describe  the  work  that  is 
being  done  through  nature-study  and  agriculture  in  the 
public  schools,  through  agricultural  schools,  through 
our  magnificent  agricultural  colleges,  through  farmers' 
institutes,  and  especially  through  the  experiment  sta- 
tions and  the  Federal  Department  of  Agriculture  in 
agricultural  research  and  in  the  distribution  of  the 
best  agricultural  information — merely  to  inventory 
these  movements  properly  would  take  the  time  available 
for  this  discussion.  What  has  been  said  relative  to  agri- 
cultural education  is  less  in  way  of  criticism  of  existing 


134  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

methods  than  in  way  of  suggestion  as  to  fundamental 
needs. 

Wide  generalizations  as  to  the  exact  moral  situation 
in  the  rural  community  are  impossible.  Conditions  have 
not  been  adequately  studied.  It  is  probably  safe  to  say 
that  the  country  environment  is  extremely  favorable 
for  pure  famil}'  life,  for  temperance,  and  for  bodily  and 
mental  health.  To  picture  the  country  a  paradise  is, 
however,  mere  silliness.  There  are  in  the  country,  as 
elsewhere,  evidences  of  vulgarity  in  language,  of  coarse- 
ness in  thought,  of  social  impurity,  of  dishonesty  in 
business.  There  is  room  in  the  country  for  all  the 
ethical  teaching  that  can  be  given. 

Nor  is  it  easy  to  discuss  the  country  church  question. 
Conditions  vary  in  different  parts  of  the  Union,  and  no 
careful  study  has  been  made  of  the  problem.  As  a  gen- 
eral proposition,  it  may  be  said  that  there  are  too  many 
churches  in  the  country,  and  that  these  are  iUy  sup- 
ported. Consequently,  they  have  in  many  cases  in- 
ferior ministers.  Sectarianism  is  probably  more  divisive 
than  in  the  city,  not  only  because  of  the  natural  con- 
servatism of  the  people  and  a  natural  disinclination  to 
change  their  views,  but  because  sectarian  quarrels  are 
perhaps  more  easily  fomented  and  less  easily  harmonized 
than  anywhere  else.  Moreover,  in  the  city  a  person  can 
usually  find  a  denomination  to  his  liking.  In  the  coun- 
try, even  with  the  present  overchurched  condition,  this 
is  difficult. 

The  ideal  solution  of  the  country  church  problem  is 
to  have  in  each  rural  community  one  strong  church 
adequately  supported,  properly  equipped,  ministered 
to  by  an  able  man — a  church  which  leads  in  community 


THE  PROBLEMS  OF  PROGRESS         135 

service.  The  path  to  the  realization  of  such  an  ideal  Is 
rough  and  thorny.  Church  federation,  however, 
promises  large  results  in  this  direction  and  should  be 
especially  encouraged. 

Whatever  outward  form  the  solution  of  the  country 
church  question  may  take,  there  seem  to  be  several  gen- 
eral principles  involved  in  a  satisfactory  attempt  to 
meet  the  issue.  In  the  first  place,  the  country  church 
offers  a  problem  by  itself,  socially  considered.  Methods 
successful  in  the  city  may  not  succeed  in  the  country. 
The  country  church  question  must  then  be  studied  thor- 
oughly and  on  the  ground. 

Again,  the  same  principle  of  financial  aid  to  be 
utilized  in  the  case  of  the  schools  must  be  invoked  here. 
The  wealth  of  the  whole  church  must  contribute  to  the 
support  of  the  church  everywhere.  The  strong  must 
help  the  weak.  The  city  must  help  the  country.  But 
this  aid  must  be  given  by  cooperation,  not  by  con- 
descension. The  demand  cannot  be  met  by  home  mis- 
sionary effort  nor  by  church-building  contributions  ;  the 
principle  goes  far  deeper  than  that.  Some  device  must 
be  secured  which  binds  together  the  whole  church,  along 
denominational  lines  if  must  be,  for  a  full  development 
of  church  work  in  every  community  in  the  land. 

Furthermore,  there  is  supreme  necessity  for  adding 
dignity  to  the  country  parish.  Too  often  at  present  the 
rural  parish  is  regarded  either  as  a  convenient  labora- 
tory for  the  clerical  novice,  or  as  an  asylum  for  the 
decrepit  or  inefficient.  The  country  parish  must  be  a 
parish  for  our  ablest  and  strongest.  The  ministry  of 
the  most  Christlike  must  be  to  the  hill-towns  of  Galilee 
as  well  as  to  Jerusalem. 


136  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

There  is  still  another  truth  that  the  country  church 
cannot  afford  to  ignore.  The  rural  church  question  is 
peculiarly  interwoven  with  the  industrial  and  social 
problems  of  the  farm.  A  declining  agriculture  cannot 
foster  a  growing  church.  An  active  church  can  render 
especially  strong  service  to  a  farm  community,  in  its 
influence  upon  the  religious  life,  the  home  life,  the  edu- 
cational life,  the  social  life,  and  even  upon  the  industrial 
life.  Nowhere  else  are  these  various  phases  of  society's 
activities  so  fully  members  one  of  another  as  in  the 
country.  The  country  church  should  cooperate  with 
other  rural  social  agencies.  This  means  that  the  coun- 
try pastor  should  assume  a  certain  leadership  in  move- 
ments for  rural  progress.  He  is  splendidly  fitted,  by  the 
nature  of  his  work  and  by  his  position  in  the  community, 
to  cooperate  with  earnest  farmers  for  the  social  and 
economic,  as  well  as  the  moral  and  spiritual,  upbuilding 
of  the  farm  community.  But  he  must  know  the  farm 
problem.  Here  is  an  opportunity  for  theological  semi- 
naries: let  them  make  rural  sociology  a  required  sub- 
ject. And,  better,  here  is  a  magnificent  field  of  labor 
for  the  right  kind  of  young  men.  The  country  pastorate 
may  thus  prove  to  be,  as  it  ought  to  be,  a  place  of 
honor  and  rare  privilege.  In  any  event,  the  country 
church,  to  render  its  proper  service,  not  alone  must 
minister  to  the  individual  soul,  but  must  throw  itself 
into  the  struggle  for  rural  betterment,  must  help  solve 
the  farm  problem. 

The  suggestion  that  the  country  church  should  ally 
itself  with  other  agencies  of  rural  progress  may  be  car- 
ried a  step  further.  Rural  social  forces  should  be  fed- 
erated.   The  object  of  such  federation  is  to  emphasize 


THE  PROBLEMS  OF  PROGRESS    137 

the  real  nature  of  the  farm  problem,  to  interest  many 
people  in  its  solution,  and  to  secure  the  cooperation  of 
the  various  rural  social  agencies,  each  of  which  has  its 
sphere,  but  also  its  limitations.  The  method  of  fed- 
eration is  to  bring  together,  for  conference  and  for 
active  work,  farmers — especially  representatives  of 
farmers'  organizations,  agricultural  educators,  rural 
school-teachers  and  supervisors,  country  clergymen, 
country  editors ;  in  fact,  all  who  have  a  genuine  interest 
in  the  farm  problem.  Thus  will  come  clearer  views  of 
the  questions  at  issue,  broader  plans  for  reform,  greater 
incentive  to  action,  and  more  rapid  progress. 

In  this  brief  analysis  of  the  social  problems  of 
American  farmers  it  has  been  possible  merely  to  outline 
those  aspects  of  the  subject  that  seem  to  be  funda- 
mental. It  is  hoped  that  the  importance  of  each  prob- 
lem has  been  duly  emphasized,  that  the  wisest  methods 
of  progress  have  been  indicated,  and  that  the  relation  of 
the  various  social  agencies  to  the  main  question  has 
been  clearly  brought  out.  Let  us  leave  the  subject  b}^ 
emphasizing  once  more  the  character  of  the  ultimate 
farm  problem.  This  problem  may  be  stated  more  con- 
cretely, if  not  more  accurately,  than  was  done  at  the 
opening  of  the  paper,  by  saying  that  the  ideal  of  rural 
betterment  is  to  preserve  upon  our  farms  the  typical 
American  farmer.  The  American  farmer  has  been 
essentially  a  middle-class  man.  It  is  this  type  we  must 
maintain.  Agriculture  must  be  made  to  yield  returns 
in  wealth,  in  opportunity,  in  contentment,  in  social 
position,  sufficient  to  attract  and  to  hold  to  it  a  class  of 
intelligent,  educated  American  citizens.  This  is  an  end 
vital    to    the    preservation    of    American    democratic 


138  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

ideals.  It  is  a  result  that  will  not  achieve  itself;  social 
agencies  must  be  invoked  for  its  accomplishment.  It 
demands  the  intelligent  and  earnest  cooperat'on  of  all 
who  love  the  soil  and  who  seek  America's  permanent 
welfare. 


XI 

THE  NATURE  OF  THE  PROBLEM* 

Liberty  H.  Bailey 

If  the  betterment  of  rural  conditions  is  a  process  of 
evolution,  then  all  persons  who  are  to  be  concerned  in 
the  evolution  must  take  active  part  in  it  if  they  are  to 
enjoy  the  benefits  of  the  progress;  and  I  like  to  think 
that  each  person  will  enjoy  these  benefits  in  about  the 
proportion  that  he  actively  participates  in  the  work  of 
reconstruction.  That  is  to  say,  we  all  bear  a  natural 
responsibility,  as  citizens,  to  forward  the  rural  status 
as  well  as  the  urban  status ;  and  this  responsibility  rests 
specially  on  all  those  who  are  near  the  problem  or  are  a 
part  of  it.  The  countryman  must  not  be  one  of  a 
recipient  or  receptive  class,  but  he  must  himself 
promptly  help  and  cooperate  to  solve  the  rural  problems 
and  to  discharge  his  full  obligations  to  society. 

Even  a  farm  is  not  a  private  business  in  the  sense  that 
it  should  be  absolved  of  responsibility  to  society  and  be 
outside  all  regulations  in  the  interest  of  society. 

Schools,  colleges,  experiment  stations,  departments, 
and  bureaus  devoted  to  agriculture  and  country  life 
are  now  many  and  they  are  increasing.  They  mark  a 
distinct  advance  in  the  application  of  knowledge  and 
teaching  to   the   plain   daily  problems   of   the  people. 

*  Prom  "The  Training  of  Farmers,"  by  permission  of  the  publishers, 
The  Century  Company. 

139 


140  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

They  are  rapidly  becoming  the  best  expressions  oi  the 
social  responsibility  of  government.  Their  work  is  free 
of  cost  to  individuals ;  and  in  this  fact  lies  a  danger,  now 
becoming  real,  that  their  benefits  will  be  accepted  as  a 
matter  of  course  and  of  right,  and  that  the  individual 
will  not  contribute  in  return  as  much  as  he  is  under 
obligation  to  contribute  or  as  will  make  the  help  that  he 
receives  of  real  value  to  him ;  for  I  assume  that  when  a 
person  receives  personal  help  and  encouragement  from 
society  (or  government)  he  contracts  an  obligation 
to  aid  society  and  his  fellow  man.  The  institutions 
will  render  the  best  service  when  they  help  persons  to 
help  themselves  and  when  they  stimulate  active  local 
initiative  on  the  part  of  those  with  whom  they  deal 
or  work. 

If  the  countryman  is  to  be  trained  to  the  greatest 
advantage,  it  will  not  be  enough  merely  to  bring  in 
things  from  the  outside  and  present  them  to  him.  Farm- 
ing is  a  local  business.  The  farmer  stands  on  the  land. 
In  a  highly  developed  society,  he  does  not  sell  his  farm 
and  move  on  as  soon  as  fertility  is  in  part  exhausted. 
This  being  true,  he  must  be  reached  in  terms  of  his 
environment.  He  should  be  developed  natively  from  his 
own  standpoint  and  work ;  and  all  schools,  all  libraries, 
and  organizations  of  whatever  kind  that  would  give  the 
most  help  to  the  man  on  the  land  must  begin  with  this 
point  of  view. 

I  will  illustrate  this  by  speaking  of  the  current  coun- 
try movement  to  revive  sports  and  games.  More  games 
and  recreations  are  needed  in  the  country  as  much  as  in 
the  city.  In  fact,  there  may  be  greater  need  of  them  in 
the  country  than  elsewhere.     The  tendency  seems  to  be 


THE  NATURE  OF  THE  PROBLEM      141 

just  now,  however,  to  introduce  old  folk-games.  We 
must  remember  that  folk-games  such  as  we  are  likely 
to  introduce  have  been  developed  in  other  countries  and 
in  other  times.  They  represent  the  life  of  other  peo- 
ples. To  a  large  extent  they  are  love-making  games. 
They  are  not  adapted  in  most  cases  to  our  climate.  To 
introduce  them  is  merely  to  bring  in  another  exotic  fac- 
tor and  to  develop  a  species  of  theatricals. 

I  would  rather  use  good  games  that  have  come  directly 
out  of  the  land.  Or  if  new  games  are  wanted  I  should 
like  to  try  to  invent  them,  having  in  mind  the  real  needs 
of  a  community.  I  suspect  that  suggestions  of  many 
good  sports  can  be  found  in  the  open  country,  that 
might  be  capable  of  considerable  extension  and  develop- 
ment, and  be  made  a  means  not  only  of  relaxation,  but 
of  real  education.  We  need  a  broad  constructive  de- 
velopment of  rural  recreation,  but  it  should  be  evolved 
out  of  rural  conditions  and  not  transplanted  from  the 
city. 

We  are  gradually  evolving  into  a  social  conception  of 
government,  by  which  I  mean  that  the  inherent  rights 
and  welfare  of  all  the  citizens  are  to  be  recognized  and 
safeguarded  and  that  the  whole  body  of  citizens  shall 
work  together  cooperatively  for  these  common  ends. 
Privilege  and  opportunity  belong  to  every  man,  accord- 
ing to  his  ability  and  deserts.  It  is  a  common  misappre- 
hension that  this  gradually  approaching  social  stage 
will  eliminate  individualism  and  that  its  methods  will 
constitute  a  leveling  process ;  but  individualism  and 
social  solidarity  are  not  at  all  antipodal. 

Individuality  and  personality  are  much  to  be  de- 
sired, and  we  are  under  obligation  to  see  that  they  are 


142  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

not  lost  in  our  progressing  civilization.  The  farmer  is 
the  individualist.  His  isolation,  and  his  ownership  of 
land  and  of  tools,  make  him  so.  He  may  lose  his  in- 
dividualism when  he  attempts  to  dispose  of  his  prod- 
uct, but  he  nevertheless  retains  his  feeling  of  individual- 
ity and  independence  throughout  life.  He  may  even 
resent  any  inquiry  into  his  welfare  by  government,  even 
though  it  is  apparent  that  the  sole  purpose  of  the 
inquiry  is  to  aid  him.  We  need  to  preserve  and  en- 
courage the  spirit  of  independence,  at  the  same  time 
that  we  forward  the  social  cohesion  and  working 
together  of  farmers  on  all  points  of  mutual  or  col- 
lective interest.  The  educational  and  other  institutions 
should  help  to  do  these  two  things, — to  assist  the 
farmer  to  rely  on  himself  and  to  be  resourceful,  and 
to  encourage  him  to  work  with  other  farmers  for 
the  purpose  of  increasing  the  profitableness  of  farm- 
ing and  of  developing  a  good  social  life  in  rural 
communities. 

It  will  be  seen  at  once  that  this  is  not  at  all  a  ques- 
tion of  "uplift,"  as  this  word  is  commonly  understood. 
The  rural  question  is  broadly  a  problem  of  stimulation, 
redirection,  and  reconstruction. 

Nor  is  it,  therefore,  merely  a  problem  of  technical 
agriculture  as  an  occupation,  although,  of  course,  the 
whole  rural  condition  rests  on  the  agricultural  con- 
dition. All  citizenship  must  rest  ultimately  on  occupa- 
tion, for  all  good  citizens  must  be  workers  of  one  kind 
or  another,  and  there  must  be  no  parasitic  class.  The 
question  directly  concerns  all  persons  who  live  in  rural 
communities,  whatever  their  occupation,  and  it  concerns 
them   in    all    their   relations, — in    relations    to    church. 


THE  NATURE  OF  THE  PROBLEM      113 

school,  cooperation,  organization,  to  politics  and  all 
public  improvement,  and  in  the  general  outlook  on  life 
and  the  attitude  toward  all  matters  that  affect  the  gen- 
eral welfare. 

It  is  not  a  problem  merely  of  the  thinly  settled 
farming  regions,  but  of  the  entire  country  outside 
distinctly  urban  influences,  comprising  hamlets,  villages, 
and  even  small  cities  that  sit  in  an  agricultural  region 
and  are  controlled  by  agricultural  sentiment.  To  desig- 
nate this  extra-urban  realm  I  have  used,  for  several 
years,  the  terms  "the  open  country,"  and  this  has 
now  become  current  in  this  semi-technical  or  special 
signification. 

Considered  as  a  whole,  the  people  of  the  open  country 
have  not  yet  arrived  at  a  conception  of  a  thoroughly 
social  or  cooperative  society.  The  farming  people  have 
been  obliged — and  are  still  obliged — to  give  too  great  a 
proportion  of  their  thought  and  energy  merely  to 
making  a  living.  They  have  not  entered  on  the  social 
phase  and  they  scarcely  know  what  it  means.  They  are 
tied  to  the  daily  routine  both  because  they  have  not 
learned  how  to  organize  and  conduct  an  agricultural 
business  efi"ectively,  and  because  they  are  preyed  upon 
and  subjugated  by  interests  that  control  distribution, 
exchange,  and  markets,  and  that  divert  or  exploit  the 
common  resources  of  the  earth. 

The  farmer  must  be  aided  in  his  business  of  farming, 
and  the  artificial  hindrances  that  are  not  a  part  of  this 
business  must  be  removed  or  checked  by  government ; 
then  he  must  be  made  to  feel  that  he  is  to  give  of  lais 
time  and  talent  to  the  community.  In  the  largest  sense, 
no  person  is  a  good  citizen,  whether  in  country  or  town, 


144  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

who  merely  has  good  character  and  is  passively  inof- 
fensive and  is  a  "good  neighbor."  He  must  be  actively 
interested  in  the  public  welfare,  and  be  willing  to  put 
himself  under  the  guidance  of  a  good  local  leader,  if 
he  does  not  himself  attain  to  leadership. 


XII 
THE  MAN  WHO  WORKS  WITH  HIS  HANDS  * 

Theodore  Roosevelt 

As  A  people  there  is  nothing  in  which  we  take  a  juster 
pride  than  our  educational  system.  It  is  our  boast  that 
every  boy  or  girl  has  the  chance  to  get  a  school  train- 
ing; and  we  feel  it  is  a  prime  national  duty  to  furnish 
this  training  free,  because  only  thereby  can  we  secure 
the  proper  type  of  citizenship  in  the  average  American. 
Our  public  schools  and  our  colleges  have  done  their 
work  well,  and  there  is  no  class  of  our  citizens  deserving 
of  heartier  praise  than  the  men  and  women  who  teach 
in  them. 

N€vertheless,  for  at  least  a  generation  we  have  been 
waking  to  the  knowledge  that  there  must  be  additional 
education  beyond  that  provided  in  the  public  school  as 
it  is  managed  to-day.  Our  school  system  has  hitherto 
been  well-nigh  wholly  lacking  on  the  side  of  industrial 
training,  of  the  training  which  fits  a  man  for  the  shop 
and  the  farm.  This  is  a  most  serious  lack,  for  no  one 
can  look  at  the  peoples  of  mankind  as  they  stand  at 
present  without  realizing  that  industrial  training  is  one 
of  the  most  potent  factors  in  national  development. 
We  of  the  United  States  must  develop  a  system  under 
which  each  individual  citizen  shall  be  trained  so  as  to  be 

*  An  address  delivered  at  the  Semi-centenni'al  of  tke  Michigtan  Agricml- 
tural  College,  Friday  afternoon,  May  31st,  1907. 

145 


146  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

effective  individually  as  an  economic  unit  and  fit  to  be 
organized  with  his  fellows  ;  so  that  he  and  they  can  work 
in  efficient  fashion  together.  This  question  is  vital  to 
our  future  progress,  and  public  attention  should  be 
focused  upon  it.  Surely  it  is  eminently  in  accord  with 
the  principles  of  our  democratic  life  that  we  should  fur- 
nish the  highest  average  industrial  training  for  the 
ordinary  skilled  workman.  But  it  is  a  curious  thing 
that  in  industrial  training  we  have  tended  to  devote  our 
energies  to  producing  high-grade  men  at  the  top  rather 
than  in  the  ranks.  Our  engineering  schools,  for  instance, 
compare  favorably  with  the  best  in  Europe,  whereas 
we  have  done  almost  nothing  to  equip  the  private 
soldiers  of  the  industrial  army — the  mechanic,  the 
metal-worker,  the  carpenter.  Indeed,  too  often  our 
schools  train  away  from  the  shop  and  the  forge;  and 
this  fact,  together  with  the  abandonment  of  the  old 
apprentice  system,  has  resulted  in  such  an  absence  of 
facilities  for  providing  trained  journeymen  that  in 
many  of  our  trades  almost  all  the  recruits  among  the 
workmen  are  foreigners.  Surely  this  means  that  there 
must  be  some  systematic  method  provided  for  training 
young  men  in  the  trades,  and  that  this  must  be  co- 
ordinated with  the  public-school  system.  No  industrial 
school  can  turn  out  a  finished  journeyman;  but  it  can 
furnish  the  material  out  of  which  a  finished  journey- 
man can  be  made,  just  as  an  engineering  school  fur- 
nishes the  training  which  enables  its  graduates  speedily 
to  become  engineers. 

We  hear  a  great  deal  of  the  need  of  protecting  our 
workingmen  from  competition  with  pauper  labor.  I 
have  very  little  fear  of  the  competition  of  pauper  labor. 


MAN  WHO  WORKS  WITH  HIS  HANDS  14T 

The  nations  with  pauper  labor  are  not  the  formidable 
industrial  competitors  of  this  country.  What  the  Amer- 
ican workingman  has  to  fear  is  the  competition  of  the 
higlily  skilled  workingman  of  the  countries  of  greatest 
industrial  efficiency.  By  the  tariff  and  by  our  immigra- 
tion laws  we  can  always  protect  ourselves  against  the 
competition  of  pauper  labor  here  at  home ;  but  when  we 
contend  for  the  markets  of  the  world  we  can  get  no  pro- 
tection, and  we  shall  then  find  that  our  most  formidable 
competitors  are  the  nations  in  which  there  is  the  most 
highly  developed  business  ability,  the  most  highly  de- 
veloped industrial  skill;  and  these  are  the  qualities 
which  we  must  ourselves  develop. 

We  have  been  fond  as  a  nation  of  speaking  of  the 
dignity  of  labor,  meaning  thereby  manual  labor.  Per- 
sonally I  don't  think  that  we  begin  to  understand  what 
a  high  place  manual  labor  should  take;  and  it  never 
can  take  this  high  place  unless  it  offers  scope  for  the 
best  type  of  man.  We  have  tended  to  regard  education 
as  a  matter  of  the  head  only,  and  the  result  is  that  a 
great  many  of  our  people,  themselves  the  sons  of  men 
who  worked  with  their  hands,  seem  to  think  that  they 
rise  in  the  world  if  they  get  into  a  position  where  they 
do  no  hard  manual  work  whatever;  where  their  hands 
will  grow  soft  and  their  working-clothes  will  be  kept 
clean.  Such  a  conception  is  both  false  and  mischievous. 
There  are,  of  course,  kinds  of  labor  where  the  work 
must  be  purely  mental,  and  there  are  other  kinds  of 
labor  where,  under  existing  conditions,  very  little  de- 
mand indeed  is  made  upon  the  mind,  though  I  am  glad 
to  say  that  I  think  the  proportion  of  men  engaged  in 
this  kind  of  work  is  diminishing.     But  in  any  healthy 


148  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

community,  in  any  community  with  the  great  solid 
qualities  which  alone  make  a  really  great  nation,  the 
bulk  of  the  people  should  do  work  which  makes  demands 
upon  both  the  body  and  the  mind.  Progress  cannot 
permanently  consist  in  the  abandonment  of  physical 
labor,  but  in  the  development  of  physical  labor  so  that 
it  shall  represent  more  and  more  the  work  of  the  trained 
mind  in  the  trained  body.  To  provide  such  training, 
to  encourage  in  every  way  the  production  of  the  men 
whom  it  alone  can  produce,  is  to  show  that  as  a  nation 
we  have  a  true  conception  of  the  dignity  and  importance 
of  labor.  The  calling  of  the  skilled  tiller  of  the  soil,  the 
calling  of  the  skilled  mechanic,  should  alike  be  recog- 
nized as  professions,  just  as  emphatically  as  the  call- 
ings of  lawyer,  of  doctor,  or  banker,  merchant,  or 
clerk.  The  printer,  the  electrical  worker,  the  house 
painter,  the  foundry  man,  should  be  trained  just  as 
carefully  as  the  stenographer  or  the  drug  clerk.  They 
should  be  trained  alike  in  head  and  in  hand.  They 
should  get  ov^r  the  idea  that  to  earn  twelve  dollars  a 
week  and  -call  it  "salary"  is  better  than  to  earn  twenty- 
five  dollars  a  week  and  call  it  "wages."  The  young 
man  who  has  the  courage  and  ability  to  refuse  to  enter 
the  crowded  field  of  the  so-called  professions  and  to  ±ake 
to  constructive  industry  is  almost  sure  of  an  ample 
reward  in  earnings,  in  health,  in  opportunity  to  marry 
early,  and  to  establish  a  home  with  reasonable  freedom 
from  worry.  We  need  the  training,  the  manual  dexter- 
ity, and  industrial  intelligence  which  can  best  be  given 
in  a  good  agricultural,  or  building,  or  textile,  or  watch- 
making, or  engraving,  or  mechanical  school.  It  should 
be  one  of  our  prime  objects  to  put  the  mechanic,  the 


MAN  WHO  WORKS  WITH  HIS  HANDS  149 

wage-worker  who  works  with  his  hands,  and  who  ought 
to  work  in  a  constantly  larger  degree  with  his  head,  on 
a  higher  plane  of  efficiency  and  reward,  so  as  to  in- 
crease his  effectiveness  in  the  economic  world,  and  there- 
fore the  dignity,  the  remuneration,  and  the  power  of 
his  position  in  the  social  world.  To  train  boys  and 
girls  in  merely  literary  accomplishments  to  the  total 
exclusion  of  industrial,  manual,  and  technical  training 
tends  to  unfit  them  for  industrial  work ;  and  in  real  life 
most  work  is  industrial. 

The  problem  of  furnishing  well-trained  craftsmen,  or 
rather  journeymen  fitted  in  the  end  to  become  such,  is 
not  simple — few  problems  are  simple  in  the  actual 
process  of  their  solution — and  much  care  and  fore- 
thought and  practical  common-sense  will  be  needed,  in 
order  to  work  it  out  in  a  fairly  satisfactory  manner.  It 
should  appeal  to  all  our  citizens.  I  am  glad  that 
societies  have  already  been  formed  to  promote  indus- 
trial education,  and  that  their  membership  includes 
manufacturers  and  leaders  of  labor  unions,  educators 
and  publicists,  men  of  all  conditions  who  are  interested 
in  education  and  in  industry.  It  is  such  cooperation 
that  offers  most  hope  for  a  satisfactory  solution  of  the 
question  as  to  what  is  the  best  form  of  industrial  school, 
as  to  the  means  by  which  it  may  be  articulated  with  the 
public-school  system,  and  as  to  the  way  to  secure  for 
the  boys  trained  therein  the  opportunity  to  acquire  in 
the  industries  the  practical  skill  which  alone  can  make 
them  finished  journeymen. 

There  Is  but  one  person  whose  welfare  is  as  vital  to 
the  welfare  of  the  whole  country  as  is  that  of  the  wage- 
worker  who  does  manual  labor,  and  that  is  the  tiller  of 


160  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

the  soil — the  farmer.  If  there  is  one  lesson  taught  by 
history,  it  is  that  the  permanent  greatness  of  any  state 
must  ultimately  depend  more  upon  the  character  of  its 
country  population  than  upon  anything  else.  No 
growth  of  cities,  no  growth  of  wealth,  can  make  up  for 
a  loss  in  either  the  number  or  the  character  of  the  farm- 
ing population.  In  the  United  States  more  than  in 
almost  any  other  country  we  should  realize  this  and 
should  prize  our  country  population.  When  this 
nation  began  its  independent  existence  it  was  as  a 
nation  of  farmers.  The  towns  were  small  and  were  for 
the  most  part  near  seacoast  trading  and  fishing  ports. 
The  chief  industry  of  the  country  was  agriculture,  and 
the  ordinary  citizen  was  in  some  way  connected  with  it. 
In  every  great  crisis  of  the  past  a  peculiar  dependence 
has  had  to  be  placed  upon  the  farming  population ;  and 
this  dependence  has  hitherto  been  justified.  But  it  can- 
not be  justified  in  the  future  if  agriculture  is  permitted 
to  sink  in  the  scale  as  compared  with  other  employ- 
ments. We  cannot  afford  to  lose  that  preeminently 
typical  American,  the  farmer  who  owns  his  own  farm. 
Yet  it  would  be  idle  to  deny  that  in  the  last  half- 
century  there  has  been  in  the  eastern  half  of  our  coun- 
try a  falling  off  in  the  relative  condition  of  the  tillers  of 
the  soil,  although  signs  are  multiplying  that  the  nation 
has  waked  up  to  the  danger  and  is  preparing  to  grapple 
effectively  with  it.  East  of  the  Mississippi  and  north 
of  the  Ohio  and  the  Potomac  there  has  been  on  the 
whole  an  actual  shrinkage  in  the  number  of  the  farming 
population  since  the  Civil  War.  In  the  states  of  tbis 
section  there  has  been  a  growth  of  population — in  some 
an  enormous  growth — 'but  the  growth  has  taken  place 


MAN  WHO  WORKS  WITH  HIS  HANDS  151 

in  the  cities,  and  especially  in  the  larger  cities.  This 
has  been  due  to  certain  economic  factors,  such  as  the 
extension  of  railroads,  the  development  of  machinery, 
and  the  openings  for  industrial  success  afforded  by  the 
unprecedented  growth  of  cities.  The  increased  facility 
of  communication  has  resulted  in  the  withdrawal  from 
rural  communities  of  most  of  the  small,  widely  dis- 
tributed manufacturing  and  commercial  operations  of 
former  times,  and  the  substitution  therefor  of  the  cen- 
tralized commercial  and  manufacturing  industries  of 
the  cities. 

The  chief  offset  to  the  various  tendencies  which  have 
told  against  the  farm  has  hitherto  come  in  the  rise  of 
the  physical  sciences  and  their  application  to  agricul- 
tural practices  or  to  the  rendering  of  country  con- 
ditions more  easy  and  pleasant.  But  these  countervail- 
ing forces  are  as  yet  in  their  infancy.  As  compared 
with  a  few  decades  ago,  the  social  or  community  life  of 
country  people  in  the  East  compares  less  well  than  it 
formerly  did  with  that  of  the  dwellers  in  cities.  Many 
country  communities  have  lost  their  social  coherence, 
their  sense  of  community  interest.  In  such  communi- 
ties the  country  church,  for  instance,  has  gone  back- 
ward, both  as  a  social  and  a  religious  factor.  Now,  we 
cannot  insist  too  strongly  upon  the  fact  that  it  is  quite 
as  unfortunate  to  have  any  social  as  any  economic 
falling  off.  It  would  be  a  calamity  to  have  our  farms 
occupied  by  a  lower  type  of  people  than  the  hard- 
working, self-respecting,  independent,  and  essentially 
manly  men  and  womanly  women  who  have  hitherto  con- 
stituted the  most  typically  American,  and  on  the  whole 
the  most  valuable  element  in  our  entire  nation.     Am- 


152  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

bitlous  native-born  young  men  and  women  who  now 
tend  away  from  the  farm  must  be  brought  back  to  it, 
and  therefore  they  must  have  social  as  well  as  economic 
opportunities.  Everything  should  be  done  to  encourage 
the  growth  in  the  open  farming  country  of  such  insti- 
tutional and  social  movements  as  will  meet  the  demand 
of  the  best  type  of  farmers.  There  should  be  libraries, 
assembly  halls,  social  organizations  of  all  kinds.  The 
school  building  and  the  teacher  in  the  school  building 
should,  throughout  the  country  districts,  be  of  the  very 
highest  type,  able  to  fit  the  boys  and  girls  not  merely  to 
live  but  thoroughly  to  enjoy  and  to  make  the  most  of 
the  country.  The  country  church  must  be  revived.  All 
kinds  of  agencies,  from  rural  free  delivery  to  the 
bicycle  and  the  telephone,  should  be  utilized  to  the 
utmost;  good  roads  should  be  favored;  everything 
should  be  done  to  make  it  easier  for  the  farmer  to  lead 
the  most  active  and  effective  intellectual,  political,  and 
economic  life. 

There  are  regions  of  large  extent  where  all  this,  or 
most  of  this,  has  already  been  realized;  and  while  this 
is  perhaps  especially  true  of  great  tracts  of  farming 
country  west  of  the  Mississippi,  with  some  of  which  I 
have  a  fairly  intimate  personal  knowledge,  it  is  no  less 
true  of  other  great  tracts  of  country  east  of  the 
Mississippi.  In  these  regions  the  church  and  the  school 
flourish  as  never  before ;  there  is  a  more  successful  and 
more  varied  farming  industry ;  the  social  advantages 
and  opportunities  are  greater  than  ever  before ;  life  is 
fuller,  happier,  more  useful;  and  though  the  work  is 
more  effective  than  ever,  and  in  a  way  quite  as  hard,  it 
is   carried  on  so  as  to  give  more  scope  for  well-used 


MAN  WHO  WORKS  WITH  HIS  HANDS  153 

leisure.  My  plea  is  that  we  shall  all  try  to  make  more 
nearly  universal  the  conditions  that  now  obtain  in  the 
most  favored  localities. 

Nothing  in  the  way  of  scientific  work  can  ever  take 
the  place  of  business  management  on  a  farm.  We  ought 
all  of  us  to  teach  ourselves  as  much  as  possible ;  but  we 
can  also  all  of  us  learn  from  others ;  and  the  farmer 
can  best  learn  how  to  manage  his  farm  even  better  than 
he  now  does  by  practice,  under  intelligent  supervision 
on  his  own  soil  in  such  a  way  as  to  increase  his  income. 
This  is  the  kind  of  teaching  which  has  been  carried  on 
in  Texas,  Louisiana,  and  Arkansas  by  Doctor  Knapp, 
of  the  National  Department  of  Agriculture.  But  much 
has  been  accomplished  by  the  growth  of  what  is  broadly 
designated  as  agricultural  science.  This  has  been  de- 
veloped with  remarkable  rapidity  during  the  last  quar- 
ter of  a  century,  and  the  benefit  to  agriculture  has  been 
great.  As  was  inevitable,  there  was  much  error  and 
much  repetition  of  work  in  the  early  application  of 
money  to  the  needs  of  agricultural  colleges  and  experi- 
ment stations  alike  by  the  nation  and  the  several  states. 
Much  has  been  accomplished;  but  much  more  can  be 
accomplished  in  the  future.  The  prime  need  must 
always  be  for  real  research,  resulting  in  scientific  con- 
clusions of  proved  soundness.  Both  the  farmer  and  the 
legislature  must  be  aware  of  invariably  demanding  im- 
mediate returns  from  investments  in  research  efforts. 
It  is  probably  one  of  our  faults  as  a  nation  that  we  arc 
too  impatient  to  wait  a  sufficient  length  of  time  to 
accomplish  the  best  results ;  and  in  agriculture  effective 
research  often,  although  not  always,  involves  slow  and 
long-continued  effort  if  the  results   are  to  be  trust- 


154  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

worthy.  While  applied  science  in  agriculture  as  else- 
where must  be  judged  largely  from  the  standpoint  of 
its  actual  return  in  dollars,  3'et  the  farmers  no  more 
than  anyone  else  can  afford  to  ignore  the  large  results 
[  that  can  be  enjoyed  because  of  broader  knowledge.  The 
farmer  must  prepare  for  using  the  knowledge  that  can 
be  obtained  through  agricultural  colleges  by  insisting 
upon  a  constantly  more  practical  curriculum  in  the 
schools  in  which  his  children  are  taught.  He  must  not 
lose  his  independence,  his  initiative,  his  rugged  self- 
sufficiency;  and  yet  he  must  learn  to  work  in  the 
heartiest  cooperation  with  his  fellows. 

The  corner  stones  of  our  unexampled  prosperity  are, 
on  the  one  hand,  the  production  of  raw  material,  and  its 
manufacture  and  distribution  on  the  other.  These  two 
great  groups  of  subjects  are  represented  in  the  na- 
tional government  principally  by  the  Department  of 
Agriculture  and  the  Department  of  Commerce  and 
Labor.*  The  production  of  raw  material  from  the  sur- 
face of  the  earth  is  the  sphere  in  which  the  Department 
of  Agriculture  has  hitherto  achieved  such  notable  re- 
sults. Of  all  the  executive  departments  there  is  no 
other,  not  even  the  Post-Office,  which  comes  into  more 
direct  and  beneficent  contact  with  the  dail}^  life  of  the 
people  than  the  Department  of  Agriculture,  and  none 
whose  yield  of  practical  benefits  is  greater  in  proportion 
to  the  public  money  expended. 

But  great  as  its  services  have  been  in  the  past,  the 
Department  of  Agriculture  has  a  still  larger  field  of 
usefulness  ahead.  It  has  been  dealing  with  growing 
crops.     It  must  hereafter  deal  also  with  living  men. 

*  In  1913  this  Department  was  divided  into  the  Department  of  Commerce 
and  the  Department  of  Labor. — The  Editors. 


MAN  WHO  WORKS  WITH  HIS  HANDS  loo 

Hitherto  agricultural  research,  instruction,  and  agita- 
tion have  been  directed  almost  exclusively  toward  the 
production  of  wealth  from  the  soil.  It  is  time  to  adopt 
in  addition  a  new  point  of  view.  Hereafter  another 
great  task  befdre  the  National  Department  of  Agricul- 
ture and  the  similar  agencies  of  the  various  states  must 
be  to  foster  agriculture  for  its  social  results,  or,  in  other 
words,  to  assist  in  bringing  about  the  best  kind  of  life 
on  the  farm  for  the  sake  of  producing  the  best  kind  of 
men.  The  government  must  recognize  the  far-reaching 
importance  of  the  study  and  treatment  of  the  prob- 
lems of  farm  life,  alike  from  the  social  and  the  economic 
standpoints ;  and  the  federal  and  state  departments  of 
agriculture  should  cooperate  at  every  point. 

The  farm  grows  the  raw  material  for  the  food  and 
clothing  of  all  our  citizens ;  it  supports  directly  almost 
half  of  them ;  and  nearly  half  the  children  of  the  United 
States  are  born  and  brought  up  on  farms.  How  can  the 
life  of  the  farm  family  be  made  less  solitary,  fuller  of 
opportunity,  freer  from  drudgery,  more  comfortable, 
happier,  and  more  attractive?  Such  a  result  is  most 
earnestly  to  be  desired.  How  can  life  on  the  farm  be 
kept  on  the  highest  level,  and  where  it  is  not  already 
on  that  level,  be  so  improved,  dignified,  and  brightened 
as  to  awaken  and  keep  alive  the  pride  and  loyalty 
of  the  farmer's  boys  and  girls,  of  the  farmer's 
wife,  and  of  the  farmer  himself?  How  can  a  compelling 
desire  to  live  on  the  farm  be  aroused  in  the  children  that 
are  born  on  the  farm?  All  these  questions  are  of  vital 
importance,  not  only  to  the  farmer,  but  to  the  whole 
nation ;  and  the  Department  of  Agriculture  must  do  its 
share  in  answering  them. 


156  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

The  drift  toward  the  city  is  largely  determined  by 
the  superior  social  opportunities  to  be  enjoyed  there, 
by  the  greater  vividness  and  movement  of  city  life.  Con- 
sidered from  the  point  of  view  of  natural  efficiency,  the 
problem  of  the  farm  is  as  much  a  problem  of  attractive- 
ness as  it  is  a  problem  of  prosperity.  It  has  ceased  to 
be  merely  a  problem  of  growing  wheat  and  corn  and 
cattle.  The  problem  of  production  has  not  ceased  to  be 
fundamental,  but  it  is  no  longer  final;  just  as  learning 
to  read  and  write  and  cipher  are  fundamental,  but  are 
no  longer  the  final  ends  of  education.  We  hope  ulti- 
mately to  double  the  average  yield  of  wheat  and  corn 
per  acre ;  it  will  be  a  great  achievement ;  but  it  is  even 
more  important  to  double  the  desirability,  comfort,  and 
standing  of  the  farmer's  life. 

We  must  consider,  then,  not  merely  bow  to  produce, 
but  also  how  production  affects  the  producer.  In  the 
past  we  have  given  but  scant  attention  to  the  social  side 
of  farm  life.  We  should  study  much  more  closely  than 
has  yet  been  done  the  social  organization  of  the  country, 
and  inquire  whether  its  institutions  are  now  really  as 
useful  to  the  farmer  as  they  should  be,  or  whether  they 
should  not  be  given  a  new  direction  and  a  new  impulse, 
for  no  farmer's  life  should  lie  merely  within  the 
boundary  of  his  farm.  This  study  must  be  of  the  East 
and  the  West,  the  North  and  the  South ;  for  the  needs 
vary  from  place  to  place. 

First  in  importance,  of  course,  comes  the  effort  to 
secure  the  mastery  of  production.  Great  strides  toward 
this  end  have  already  been  taken  over  the  larger  part  of 
the  United  States ;  much  remains  to  be  done,  but  much 
has  been  done ;  and  the  debt  of  the  nation  to  the  various 


MAN  WHO  WORKS  WITH  HIS  HANDS  157 

agencies  of  agricultural  improvement  for  so  great  an 
advance  is  not  to  be  overstated.  But  we  cannot  halt 
here.  The  benefits  of  high  social  organization  include 
such  advantages  as  ease  of  communication,  better  edu- 
cational facilities,  increased  comfort  of  living,  and  those 
opportunities  for  social  and  intellectual  life  and  inter- 
course, of  special  value  to  the  young  people  and  to  the 
women,  which  are  as  yet  chiefly  to  be  had  in  centers  of 
population.  All  of  this  must  be  brought  within  the 
reach  of  the  farmers  who  live  on  the  farms,  of  the  men 
whose  labor  feeds  and  clothes  the  towns  and  cities. 

Farmers  must  learn  the  vital  need  of  cooperation 
with  one  another.  Next  to  this  comes  cooperation 
with  the  government  and  the  government  can  best  give 
its  aid  through  associations  of  farmers  rather  than 
through  the  individual  farmer ;  for  there  is  no  greater 
agricultural  problem  than  that  of  delivering  to  the 
farmer  the  large  body  of  agricultural  knowledge  which 
has  been  accumulated  by  the  national  and  state  govern- 
ments and  by  the  agricultural  colleges  and  schools. 
Nowhere  has  the  government  worked  to  better  ad- 
vantage than  in  the  South,  where  the  work  done  by  the 
Department  of  Agriculture  in  connection  with  the 
cotton  growers  of  the  southwestern  states  has  been  phe- 
nomenal in  its  value.  The  farmers  in  the  region  affected 
by  the  boll  weevil,  in  the  course  of  the  efforts  to  fight  it, 
have  succeeded  in  developing  a  most  scientific  hus- 
bandry, so  that  in  many  places  the  boll  weevil  became 
a  blessing  in  disguise.  Not  only  did  the  industry  of 
farming  become  of  very  much  greater  economic  value  in 
its  direct  results,  but  it  became  immensely  more  inter- 
esting to  thousands  of  families.    The  meetings  at  which 


158  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

the  new  subjects  of  interest  were  discussed  grew  to  have 
a  distinct  social  value,  while  with  the  farmers  were 
joined  the  merchants  and  bankers  of  the  neighborhood. 
It  is  needless  to  say  that  every  such  successful  effort  to 
organize  the  farmer  gives  a  great  stimulus  to  the  ad- 
mirable educational  work  which  is  being  done  in  the 
southern  states,  as  elsewhere,  to  prepare  young  people 
for  an  agricultural  life.  It  is  greatly  to  be  wished  that 
the  communities  whence  these  students  are  drawn  and 
to  which  they  either  return  or  should  return,  could  be 
cooperatively  organized;  that  is,  that  associations  of 
farmers  could  be  organized,  primarily  for  business  pur- 
poses, but  also  with  social  ends  in  view.  This  would 
mean  that  the  returned  students  from  the  institutions  of 
technical  learning  would  find  their  environment  pre- 
pared to  profit  to  the  utmost  by  the  improvements  in 
technical  methods  which  they  had  learned. 

The  people  of  our  farming  regions  must  be  able  to 
combine  among  themselves  as  the  most  efficient  means 
of  protecting  their  industry  from  the  highly  organized 
interests  which  now  surround  them  on  every  side.  A 
vast  field  is  open  for  work  by  cooperative  associations 
of  farmers  in  dealing  with  the  relation  of  the  farm  to 
transportation  and  to  the  distribution  and  manufac- 
ture of  raw  materials.  It  is  only  through  such  combi- 
nation that  American  farmers  can  develop  to  the  full 
their  economic  and  social  power.  Combination  of  this 
kind  has,  in  Denmark,  for  instance,  resulted  in  bring- 
ing the  people  back  to  the  land,  and  has  enabled  the 
Danish  peasant  to  compete  in  extraordinary  fashion, 
not  only  at  home  but  in  foreign  countries,  with  all 
rivals. 


MAN  WHO  WORKS  WITH  HIS  HANDS  159 

Agricultural  colleges  and  farmers'  institutes  have 
done  much  in  instruction  and  inspiration;  they  have 
stood  for  the  nobility  of  labor  and  the  necessity  of 
keeping  the  muscles  and  the  brain  in  training  for  indus- 
try. They  have  developed  technical  departments  of 
high  practical  value.  They  seek  to  provide  for  the 
people  on  the  farms  an  equipment  so  broad  and  thor- 
ough as  to  fit  them  for  the  highest  requirements  of  our 
citizenship;  so  that  they  can  establish  and  maintain 
country  homes  of  the  best  type  and  create  and  sustain 
a  country  civilization  more  than  equal  to  that  of  the 
city.  The  men  they  train  must  be  able  to  meet  the 
strongest  business  competition,  at  home  or  abroad,  and 
they  can  do  this  only  if  they  are  trained,  not  alone  in 
the  various  lines  of  husbandry,  but  in  successful 
economic  management.  These  colleges,  like  the  state 
experiment  stations,  should  carefully  study  and  make 
known  the  needs  of  each  section,  and  should  try  to  pro- 
vide remedies  for  what  is  wrong. 

The  education  to  be  obtained  in  these  colleges  should 
create  as  intimate  relationship  as  it  is  possible  between 
the  theory  of  learning  and  the  facts  of  actual  life. 
Educational  establishments  should  produce  highly 
trained  scholars,  of  course ;  but  in  a  country  like  ours, 
where  the  educational  establishments  are  so  numerous, 
it  is  folly  to  think  that  their  main  purpose  is  to  pro- 
duce these  highly  trained  scholars.  Without  in  the 
least  disparaging  scholarship  and  learning — on  the 
contrary,  while  giving  hearty  and  ungrudging  admira- 
tion and  support  to  the  comparatively  few  whose 
primary  work  should  be  creative  scholarship — it  must 
be    remembered   that    the   ordinary    graduate    of    our 


160  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

colleges  should  be  and  must  be,  primarily,  a  man  and 
not  a  scholar.  Education  should  not  confine  itself  to 
books.  It  must  train  executive  power  and  try  to 
create  that  right  public  opinion  which  is  the  most  potent 
factor  in  the  proper  solution  of  all  political  and  social 
questions.  Book-learning  is  very  important,  but  it  is 
by  no  means  everything;  and  we  shall  never  get  the 
right  idea  of  education  until  we  definitely  understand 
that  a  man  may  be  well  trained  in  book-learning  and 
yet,  in  the  proper  sense  of  the  word  and  for  all  prac- 
tical purposes,  be  utterly  uneducated ;  while  a  man  of 
comparatively  little  book-learning  may,  nevertheless, 
in  essentials  have  a  good  education. 

It  is  true  that  agriculture  in  the  United  States  has 
reached  a  very  high  level  of  prosperity ;  but  we  cannot 
afford  to  disregard  the  signs  which  teach  us  that  there 
are  influences  operating  against  the  establishment  or 
retention  of  our  country  life  upon  a  really  sound  basis. 
The  overextensive  and  wasteful  cultivation  of  pioneer 
days  must  stop  and  give  place  to  a  more  economical 
system.  Not  only  the  physical  but  the  ethical  needs 
of  the  people  of  the  country  districts  must  be  con- 
sidered. In  our  country  life  there  must  be  social  and 
intellectual  advantages  as  well  as  a  fair  standard  of 
physical  comfort.  There  must  be  in  the  country,  as  in 
the  town,  a  multiplication  of  movements  for  intellectual 
advancement  and  social  betterment.  We  must  try  to 
raise  the  average  of  farm  life,  and  we  must  also  try  to 
develop  it  so  that  it  shall  offer  exceptional  chances  for 
the  exceptional  man. 

Of  course  the  essential  things  after  all  are  those 
which   concern   all   of  us   men  and  women,  no  matter 


MAN  WHO  WORKS  WITH  HIS  HANDS  161 

whether  we  live  in  the  town  or  in  the  country,  and  no 
matter  what  our  occupations  may  be.  The  root  prob- 
lems are  much  the  same  for  all  of  us,  widely  though 
they  may  differ  in  outward  manifestation.  The  most 
important  conditions  that  tell  for  happiness  within  the 
home  are  the  same  for  the  town  and  the  country ;  and 
the  relations  between  employer  and  employee  are  not 
always  satisfactory  on  the  farm  any  more  than  in  the 
factory.  All  over  the  country  there  is  a  constant  com- 
plaint of  paucity  of  farm  labor.  Without  attempting 
to  go  into  all  the  features  of  this  question  I  would  like 
to  point  out  that  you  can  never  get  the  right  kind,  the 
best  kind,  of  labor  if  you  offer  employment  only  for  a 
few  months,  for  no  man  worth  anything  will  perma- 
nently accept  a  system  which  leaves  him  in  idleness  for 
half  the  year. 

And  most  important  of  all,  I  want  to  say  a  special 
word  on  behalf  of  the  one  who  is  too  often  the  very 
hardest  worked  laborer  on  the  farm — the  farmer's  wife. 
Reform,  like  charity,  while  it  should  not  end  at  home, 
should  certainly  begin  there;  and  the  man,  whether  he 
lives  on  a  farm  or  in  a  town,  who  is  anxious  to  see 
better  social  and  economic  conditions  prevail  through 
the  country  at  large,  should  be  exceedingly  careful  that 
they  prevail  first  as  regards  his  own  womankind.  I 
emphatically  believe  that  for  the  great  majority  of 
women  the  really  indispensable  industry  in  which  they 
should  engage  is  the  industry  of  the  home.  There  are 
exceptions  of  course;  but  exactly  as  the  first  duty  of 
the  normal  man  is  the  duty  of  being  the  home  maker, 
so  the  first  duty  of  the  normal  woman  is  to  be  the  home 
keeper ;  and  exactly  as  no  other  learning  is  as  important 


162  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

for  the  average  man  as  the  learning  which  will  teach  him 
how  to  make  his  livelihood,  so  no  other  learning  is  as 
important  for  the  average  woman  as  the  learning 
which  will  make  her  a  good  housewife  and  mother.  But 
this  does  not  mean  that  she  should  be  an  overworked 
drudge.  I  have  hearty  sympathy  with  the  movement  to 
better  the  condition  of  the  average  tiller  of  the  soil,  of 
the  average  wage-worker,  and  I  have  an  even  heartier 
sympathy  and  applause  for  the  movement  which  is  to 
better  the  condition  of  their  respective  wives.  There  is 
plenty  that  is  hard  and  rough  and  disagreeable  in  the 
necessary  work  of  actual  life;  and  under  the  best  cir- 
cumstances, and  no  matter  how  tender  and  considerate 
the  husband,  the  wife  will  have  at  least  her  full  share  of 
work  and  worry  and  anxiety ;  but  if  the  man  is  worth 
his  salt  he  will  try  to  take  as  much  as  possible  of  the 
burden  off  the  shoulders  of  his  helpmate.  There  is 
nothing  Utopian  in  the  movement ;  all  that  is  necessary 
is  to  strive  toward  raising  the  average,  both  of  men 
and  women,  to  the  level  on  which  the  highest  type  of 
family  now  stands,  among  American  farmers,  among 
American  skilled  mechanics,  among  American  citizens 
generally;  for  in  all  the  world  there  is  no  better  and 
healthier  home  life,  no  finer  factory  of  individual  char- 
acter, nothing  more  representative  of  what  is  best  and 
most  characteristic  in  American  life  than  that  which 
exists  in  the  higher  type  of  American  family,  and  this 
higher  type  of  family  is  to  be  found  everywhere  among 
us,  and  is  the  property  of  no  special  group  of  citizens. 
The  best  crop  is  the  crop  of  children ;  the  best  prod- 
ucts of  the  farm  are  the  men  and  women  raised  there- 
on; and  the  most  instructive  and  practical  treatises 


MAN  WHO  WORKS  WITH  HIS  HANDS  16S 

on  fanning,  necessary  though  they  be,  are  no  more 
necessary  than  the  books  which  teach  us  our  duty  to 
our  neighbor,  and  above  all  to  the  neighbor  who  is  of 
our  own  household.  You  young  men  and  women  of 
tlie  agricultural  and  industrial  colleges  and  schools 
must  have  some  time  for  light  reading;  and  there  is 
Some  light  reading  quite  as  useful  as  heavy  reading, 
provided,  of  course,  that  you  do  not  read  in  a  spirit  of 
mere  vacuity.  Aside  from  the  great  classics,  and  think- 
ing only  of  the  many  healthy  and  stimulating  books  of 
the  day,  it  is  easy  to  pick  out  many  which  can  really 
serve  as  tracts,  because  they  possess  what  many  avowed 
tracts  and  treatises  do  not,  the  prime  quality  of  being 
interesting.  You  will  learn  the  root  principles  of  self- 
help  and  helpfulness  toward  others  from  "Mrs.  Wiggs 
of  the  Cabbage  Patch,"  just  as  much  as  from  any 
formal  treatise  on  charity ;  you  wiU  learn  as  much  sound 
social  and  industrial  doctrine  from  Octave  Thanet's 
stories  of  farmers  and  wage-workers  as  from  avowed 
sociological  and  economic  studies ;  and  I  cordially 
recommend  the  first  chapter  of  "Aunt  Jane  of  Ken- 
tucky" for  use  as  a  tract  in  all  families  where  the  men 
folks  tend  to  selfish  or  thoughtless  or  overbearing  disre- 
gard of  the  rights  of  their  womankind. 

Do  not  misunderstand  me.  I  have  not  the  slightest 
sympathy  with  those  hysterical  and  foolish  creatures 
who  wish  women  to  attain  to  easy  lives  by  shirking 
their  duties.  I  have  as  hearty  a  contempt  for  the 
woman  who  shirks  her  duty  of  bearing  and  rearing  the 
children,  of  doing  her  full  housewife's  work,  as  I  have 
for  the  man  who  is  an  idler,  who  shirks  his  duty  of 
earning  a  living  for  himself  and  for  his  children,  or  who 


164  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

is  selfish  or  brutal  toward  his  wife  and  children.  I 
believe  in  the  happiness  that  comes  from  the  perform- 
ance of  duty,  not  from  the  avoidance  of  duty.  But  I 
believe  also  in  trying,  each  of  us,  as  strength  is  given 
us,  to  bear  one  another's  burdens ;  and  this  especially 
in  our  own  homes.  No  outside  training,  no  cooperation, 
no  government  aid  or  direction  can  take  the  place  of  a 
strong  and  upright  character;  of  goodness  of  heart 
combined  with  clearness  of  head,  and  that  strength  and 
toughness  of  fiber  necessary  to  wring  success  from  a 
rough  workaday  world.  Nothing  outside  of  home  can 
take  the  place  of  home.  The  school  is  an  invaluable 
adjunct  to  the  home,  but  it  is  a  wretched  substitute  for 
it.  The  family  relation  is  the  most  fundamental,  the 
most  important  of  all  relations.  No  leader  in  church  or 
state,  in  science  or  art  or  industry,  however  great  his 
achievement,  takes  the  place  of  the  mothers,  "who  are 
the  first  of  sovereigns  and  the  most  divine  of  priests.^' 


XIII 

THE  COUNTRY  GIRL  • 

Martha  Foote  Crow 

The  clarion  of  the  country  life  movement  has  by  this 
time  been  blown  with  such  loudness  and  insistence  that 
no  hearing  ear  in  our  l?ind  can  have  escaped  its  an- 
nouncement. The  distant  echoes  of  brutal  warfare  have 
not  drowned  it :  above  all  possible  rude  and  cruel  sounds 
this  peaceful  piping  still  makes  itself  heard. 

It  has  reached  the  ears  of  the  farmer  and  has  stirred 
his  mind  and  heart  to  look  his  problems  in  the  face,  to 
realize  their  gigantic  implications,  and  to  shoulder  the 
responsibility  of  their  solution.  It  has  penetrated  to 
the  thoughts  of  teachers  and  educators  everywhere  and 
awakened  them  to  the  necessities  of  the  minute,  so  that 
they  have  declared  that  the  countryside  must  have  edu- 
cational schemes  adapted  to  the  needs  of  the  country- 
side people,  and  that  they  must  have  teachers  whose 
heads  are  not  in  the  clouds.  It  has  aroused  easy-going 
preachers  in  the  midst  of  their  comfortable  dreams 
and  has  caused  here  and  there  one  among  them  to  bestir 
himself  and  to  make  hitherto  unheard-of  claims  as  to 
what  the  church  might  do — if  it  would — for  the  better- 
ment of  country  life. 

And  all  of  these  have  given  hints  to  philanthropists 

*  From  "The  American  Country  Girl,"  by  Martha  Foot©  Crow.  By  per- 
mission of  the  author  aud  of  the  publishers,  Frederick  A.  Stokes  Company. 

165 


166  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

and  reformers,  and  these  to  organizations  and  societies ; 
these  again  have  suggested  theories  and  projects  to 
legislators,  senators,  and  presidents ;  the  snowball  has 
been  rolled  larger  and  larger;  commissions  have  sat, 
investigations  have  been  made,  documents  have  been 
attested,  reports  handed  in,  bills  drafted  and,  what  is 
better,  passed  by  courageous  legislatures ;  so  that  now 
great  schemes  are  being  not  only  dreamed  of,  but 
put  into  actual  fulfilment.  Moreover,  lecturers  have 
talked  and  writers  have  issued  bulletins  and  books, 
until  there  has  accumulated  a  library  of  vast  propor- 
tions on  the  many  phases  of  duty,  activity,  and  outlook 
that  may  be  included  under  the  title,  "A  Country  Life 
Movement." 

In  all  this  stirring  field  of  new  interest,  the  farmer 
and  his  business  hold  the  center  of  attention.  Beside 
him,  however,  stands  a  dim  little  figure  hitherto  kept 
much  in  the  background,  the  farmer's  wife,  who  at  last 
seems  to  be  on  the  point  of  finding  a  voice  also ;  for  a 
chapter  is  now  assigned  to  her  in  every  book  on  rural 
conditions  and  a  little  corner  under  a  scroll  work  design 
is  given  to  her  tatting  and  her  chickens  in  the  weekly 
farm  paper.  Cuddled  about  her  are  the  children,  and 
they,  the  little  farm  boys  and  girls,  have  now  a  book 
that  has  been  written  just  about  them  alone — their 
psychology  and  their  needs.  Also,  the  tall,  strong 
youth,  her  grown-up  son,  has  his  own  paper  as  an 
acknowledged  citizen  of  the  rural  commonwealth.  But 
where  is  the  tall  young  daughter,  and  where  are  the 
papers  for  her  and  the  books  about  her  needs?  It 
seems  that  she  has  not  yet  found  a  voice.  She  has 
failed  to  impress  the  makers  of  books  as  a  subject  for 


THE  COUNTRY  GIRL  167 

description  and  investigation.  In  the  nation-wide  effort 
to  find  a  solution  to  the  great  rural  problems,  the  farmer 
is  working  heroically ;  the  son  is  putting  his  shoulder 
to  the  wheel;  the  wife  and  mother  is  in  sympathy  with 
their  efforts.  Is  the  daughter  not  doing  her  share? 
Where  is  the  Country  Girl  and  what  is  happening  in 
her  department? 

It  is  easier  on  the  whole  to  discover  the  rural  young 
man  than  to  find  the  typical  Country  Girl.  Since  the 
days  of  Mother  Eve  the  woman  young  and  old  has  been 
adapting  herself  and  readapting  herself,  until,  after  all 
these  centuries  of  constant  practice,  she  has  become  a 
past  master  in  the  art  of  adaption.  Like  the  cat  in  the 
story  of  Alice,  she  disappears  in  the  intricacv  of  the 
wilderness  about  her  and  nothing  remains  of  her  but  a 
smile. 

There  are  some  perfectly  sound  reasons  why  Amer- 
ican country  girls  as  a  class  cannot  be  distinguished 
from  other  girls.  Chief  among  these  is  the  fact  that  no 
group  of  people  in  this  country  is  to  be  distinguished 
as  a  class  from  any  other  group.  It  is  one  of  the 
charms  of  life  in  this  country  that  you  never  can  place 
anybody.  No  one  can  distinguish  between  the  shop 
girl  and  a  lady  of  fashion ;  nor  is  any  school  teacher 
known  by  her  poise,  primness,  or  imperative  gesture. 
The  fashion  paper,  penetrating  to  the  remotest  dug-out, 
and  the  railway  engine  indulging  us  in  our  national 
passion  for  travel  see  to  these  things.  Moreover,  the 
pioneering  period  is  still  with  us  and  the  western 
nephews  must  visit  the  cousins  in  the  old  home  in  New 
Hampshire,  while  the  aunts  and  uncles  left  behind  must 
ro  out  and  see  the  new  Nebraska  or  Wyoming  lands 


168  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

on  which  the  young  folks  have  settled.  We  do  not  stay 
still  long  enough  anywhere  in  the  republic  for  a  class 
of  any  sort  to  harden  into  recognizable  form.  New 
inhabitants  may  come  here  already  hardened  into  the 
mold  of  some  class ;  but  they  or  their  children  usually 
soften  soon  into  the  quicksilver-like  consistency  of  their 
surroundings. 

There  is  also  no  subdividing  of  notions  on  the  basis 
of  residence,  whether  as  townsman  or  as  rural  citizen. 
The  wind  bloweth  where  it  listeth  in  this  land.  It 
whispers  its  free  secrets  into  the  ears  of  the  city- 
dweller  in  the  flat  and  of  the  rural  worker  of  the  corn- 
field or  the  vine-screened  kitchen.  The  rain  also  falls 
on  the  just  and  the  unjust  whether  suburbanated  or 
countrified.  There  is  no  rural  mind  in  America.  There 
has  indeed  been  a  great  deal  of  pother  of  late  over  the 
virtue  and  temper  of  *'rural-minded  people." 

This  debate  has  been  conscientiously  made  in  the 
effort  to  discern  reasons  why  commissions  should  sit 
on  a  rural  problem.  Reasons  enough  are  discernible 
why  commissions  should  sit,  but  they  lie  rather  in  the 
unrural  mind  of  the  rural  people,  as  the  words  are 
generally  understood,  than  in  some  supposed  qualities 
imposed  or  produced  in  the  life  of  sun  and  rain,  in  that 
vocation  which  is  nearest  to  the  creative  activities  of 
the  Divine. 

And  if  there  is  no  rural  mind,  there  is  no  distinctive 
rural  personality.  If  the  man  that  ought  to  exemplify 
it  is  found  walking  up  Fifth  Avenue  or  on  Halstead 
Street  or  along  El  Camino  Real,  he  cannot  be  discovered 
as  a  farmer.  He  may  be  discovered  as  an  ignorant 
person,  or  he  may  be  found  to  be  a  college-bred  man ; 


THE  COUNTRY  GIRL  169 

but  in  neither  case  would  the  fact  be  logically  inclusive 
or  uninclusive  of  his  function  as  farmer. 

The  same  is  almost  as  exactly  true  for  his  wife  and 
his  daughter.  If  one  should  ask  in  any  group  of  aver- 
age people  whether  the  farmer's  daughter  as  they  have 
known  her  is  a  poor  little  undeveloped  child,  silent  and 
shy,  or  a  hearty  buxom  lass,  healthy  and  strong  and 
up-to-date,  some  in  the  group  would  say  the  latter  and 
some  the  former.  Both  varieties  exist  and  can  by  search- 
ing be  found  along  the  countryside.  But  it  is  nothing 
essentially  rural  that  has  developed  either  the  one  set 
of  characteristics  or  the  other.  To  be  convinced  of 
this,  one  who  knows  this  country  well  has  but  to  read 
a  book  like  "Folk  of  the  Furrow,"  by  Christopher 
Holdenby,  a  picture  of  rural  life  in  England.  In  such 
a  book  as  that  one  realizes  the  full  meaning  of  the 
phrase,  "the  rural  mind,"  and  one  sees  how  far  the 
men  and  women  that  live  on  the  farms  in  the  United 
States  have  yet  to  go,  how  much  they  will  have  to 
coagulate,  how  many  centuries  they  will  have  to  sit  still 
in  their  places  with  wax  in  their  ears  and  weights  on 
their  eyelids,  before  they  will  have  acquired  psycholog- 
ical features  such  as  Mr.  Holdenby  gives  to  the  folk  of 
the  English  furrow. 

A  traveler  in  the  Old  World  frequently  sees  illustra- 
tions of  this.  For  instance,  in  passing  through  some 
European  picture  gallery,  he  maj'^  meet  a  woman  of 
extraordinary  strength  and  beauty,  dressed  in  a  style 
representing  the  rural  life  in  that  vicinity.  She  will 
wear  the  peasant  skirt  and  bodice,  and  will  be  without 
gloves  or  hat.  A  second  look  will  reveal  that  the  skirt 
is  made  of  satin  so  stiff  that  it  could  stand  alone ;  the 


170  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

velvet  bodice  will  be  covered  with  rich  embroidery ;  and 
heavy  chains  of  silver  of  quaint  workmanship  will 
suspend  around  the  neck. 

On  inquiry  one  may  learn  that  this  stately  woman 
was  of  what  would  be  called  in  this  country  a  farmer 
family,  that  had  now  become  very  wealthy ;  that  she 
did  not  consider  herself  above  her  "class" — so  they 
would  describe  it — no,  that  she  gloried  in  it  instead. 
It  was  from  preference  only  that  she  dressed  in  the 
fashion  of  that  "class." 

Now,  whether  desirable  or  not,  such  a  thing  as  this 
would  never  be  seen  in  America.  No  woman  (unless  it 
were  a  deaconess  or  a  Salvation  Army  lassie  or  a  nun) 
would  pass  through  the  general  crowd  showing  her 
rank  or  profession  in  life  by  her  style  of  dress.  And 
that  is  how  it  happens  that  neither  by  hat  nor  by  hat- 
lessness  would  the  country  woman  here  make  known 
her  pride  in  the  possession  of  acres  or  in  her  relation 
to  that  profession  that  forms  the  real  basis  of  national 
prosperity.  Hence  no  country  girl  counts  such  a  pride 
among  her  inheritances.  Therefore  if  it  is  not  easy  to 
find  and  understand  the  Country  Girl  as  a  type,  it  is 
not  because  she  is  consciously  or  unconsciously  hiding 
herself  away  from  us ;  she  is  not  even  sufficiently 
conscious  of  herself  as  a  member  of  a  social  group  to 
pose  in  the  attitude  of  an  interesting  mystery.  She  is 
just  a  human  being  happening  to  live  in  the  country 
(not  always  finding  it  the  best  place  for  her  proper 
welfare),  just  a  single  one  in  the  great  shifting  mass. 

Although  it  may  be  difficult  to  find  what  we  may 
think  are  typical  examples  of  the  Country  Girl  as  a 
social  group,  yet  certain  it  is  that  she  exists.    Of  young 


THE  COUNTRY  GIRL  171 

women  between  the  ages  of  fifteen  and  twenty-nine,  there 
are  in  the  United  States  six  and  a  half  million  (6,694,- 
184  to  be  exact)  who  reside  in  the  open  country  or  in 
small  villages.  This  we  are  assured  is  so  by  the  latest 
Census  Report.* 

By  starting  a  little  further  down  in  the  scale  of  girl- 
hood and  advancing  a  trifle  further  into  maturity  this 
number  could  be  doubled.  It  would  be  quite  justifiable 
to  do  this,  because  some  farmers'  daughters  become 
responsible  for  a  considerable  amount  of  labor  value 
well  before  the  age  of  fifteen ;  and  on  the  other  hand  the 
energy  of  these  young  rural  women  is  abundantly 
extended  beyond  the  gateway  of  womanhood,  far  indeed 
into  the  period  that  used  to  be  called  old-maidism,  but 
which  is  to  be  so  designated  no  more;  the  breezy,  execu- 
tive, free-handed  period  when  the  country  girl  is  of 
greatest  use  as  a  labor  unit  and  gives  herself  without 
stint  (and  often  without  pay)  to  the  welfare  of  the 
Avhole  farmstead.  The  American  Country  Girl  is  not  by 
any  means  behind  her  city  sister  in  her  ability  to  make 
the  bounds  of  her  youth  elastic,  though  the  girl  on  the 
farm  may  go  at  it  in  a  somewhat  different  way.  Then, 
perhaps,  too,  the  word  "youth"  may,  alas  !  have  another 
connotation  in  the  mind  of  one  from  what  it  has  in  the 
dreams  of  the  other. 

If  we  should,  however,  thus  enlarge  the  scope  of  our 
inquiry,  we  should  increase  but  not  clarify  our  problems. 
Moreover,  it  is  the  Country  Girl  that  interests  us, 
the  promise  and  hope  of  her  dawn,  the  delicate,  swiftly 
changing  years  of  her  growth,  the  miracle  of  her  blos- 
soming.    There  is  something  about  the  kaleidoscope  of 

*  The  figures  here  given  are  from  the  Census  of  1910. 


172  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

her  moods  and  the  inconsistencies  of  her  biography  that 
fascinates  us.  The  moment  when  she  awakes,  when  the 
sparkle  begins  to  show  in  her  eyes,  when  we  know  that 
a  conception  of  her  mission  and  of  her  supreme  value 
to  life  is  beginning  to  glow  before  her  imagination — 
that  is  the  crisis  to  work  for  and  to  be  happy  over  when 
it  comes.  As  for  us,  we  ask  no  greater  happiness  than 
once  or  twice  to  catch  a  glimpse  of  that. 

That  great  host  of  six  million  country  girls  is  scat- 
tered far  and  wide;  they  are  everywhere  present.  A 
certain  number  of  millions  of  them  are  working  indus- 
triously in  myriads  of  unabandoned  farms  all  over  the 
Appalachian  plateau,  and  on  the  wide  prairies  to  the 
Rockies  and  beyond.  In  thousands  of  farmsteads  they 
are  helping  their  mothers  wash  dishes  three  times  a  day 
three  hundred  and  sixty-five  days  in  the  year,  not 
counting  the  steps  as  they  go  back  and  forth  between 
dining-room  and  kitchen.  They  are  carrying  heavy 
pails  of  spring  water  into  the  house  and  throwing  out 
big  dishpanfuls  of  waste  water,  regardless  of  the  strain 
in  the  small  of  the  back.  They  are  picking  berries  and 
canning  them  for  the  home  table  in  the  winter;  they 
are  raising  tomatoes  and  canning  them  for  the  market ; 
they  are  managing  the  younger  children ;  they  are  bak- 
ing and  sewing  and  reading  and  singing;  they  are 
caring  for  chickens  and  for  bees  and  for  orphan  lambs  ; 
they  ride  the  rake  and  the  disc-plow  and  sometimes 
join  the  round-up  on  the  range.  Moreover,  they  go  to 
church  and  they  go  to  town  and  they  look  forward  to 
an  ideal  future  just  as  other  girls  do.  The  Country 
Girl  is  a  human  being  also. 

It  has  been  intimated  that  young  women  living  on 


THE  COUNTRY  GIRL  173 

remote  secluded  farms  have  not,  with  all  their  singing, 
been  always  able  to  dispel  the  monotony  of  a  thousand 
inevitable  dishwashings  a  year ;  they  are  said  nowadays 
to  have  opened  their  ear  to  the  lure  of  the  town  and  to 
have  started  out,  keeping  step  with  their  brothers,  to 
join  what  some  one  has  called,  "the  funeral  procession 
of  the  nation"  cityward.  If  we  could,  in  fact,  get  them 
to  confide  in  us,  we  should  find  that  they  have  longings 
and  aspirations,  many  of  which  are  unsatisfied;  and 
that  is  the  reason  why  it  seems  to  be  high  time  for  their 
voice  to  be  heard. 

Some  of  the  younger  farm  women  are  showing  them- 
selves  equal  to  the  larger  burdens  in  the  business  of 
agriculture.  They  are  running  their  own  farms  in 
Michigan  and  their  own  automobiles  in  Kansas.  They 
are  taking  up  claims.  They  are  developing  them  and 
proving  up  in  the  Dakotas  and  through  Montana  and 
Wyoming.  From  four  to  six  in  the  morning  they  till 
an  acre;  then  they  ride  twenty  miles  to  the  school  and 
teach  from  nine  to  four ;  after  that  they  ride  back  and 
work  in  their  cornfields  till  the  stars  twinkle  out.  They 
stay  alone  in  their  shack  aj:d  are  happy  and  fearless 
and  safe. 

Moreover  some  thousands  of  the  girls  are  laboriously 
teaching  schools  in  thousands  of  one-room  schoolhouses, 
where  they  provide  almost  one  hundred  per  cent,  of 
the  common  instruction  for  fifty  per  cent,  of  the 
population. 

Besides  this,  there  Is  no  one  of  all  the  gainful  oc- 
cupations in  which  young  women  of  this  country  engage 
which  has  not  drawn  upon  the  reservoir  of  country 
strength    for    supplies.      Among   those    women   Wack- 


ITl  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

smiths  and  engineers,  those  clerks,  secretaries,  librar- 
ians, and  administrators,  those  lawyers,  doctors,  pro- 
fessors, writers,  those  nurses,  settlement  workers,  inves- 
tigators and  other  servants  of  the  people  in  widely 
diverse  fields,  there  are  many  whose  clearness  of  eye  and 
reserve  of  force  have  been  developed  in  the  wholesome 
conditions  of  the  open  country.  The  Country  Girl  has 
no  reason  to  be  ashamed  of  the  part  she  has  borne  in  the 
non-rural  world.  It  has  been  said  that  about  eighty 
per  cent,  of  the  names  found  in  "Who's  Who  in  Amer- 
ica" represent  an  upbringing  in  the  rural  atmosphere. 
The  proportion  of  women  in  this  number  or  the  special 
proportion  of  grown-up  farm  girls  to  be  found  among 
those  women  cannot  be  stated;  but  the  number 'must  be 
large  enough  to  justify  a  belief  that  to  spend  a  child- 
hood in  the  open  country  or  in  the  rural  village  will  not, 
in  the  case  of  women  any  more  than  in  the  case  of  men, 
form  an  impassable  'barrier  to  eminence. 

From  this  great  rural  reserve  of  initiating  force,  sane 
judgment,  and  spiritual  drive  have  come,  in  fact,  some  of 
the  most  valued  names  in  philanthropy  and  literature. 
Among  them  we  find  the  leader  of  a  great  reform, 
Frances  Willard ;  the  inaugurator  of  a  world-wide  work 
of  mercy,  Clara  Barton ;  the  president  of  a  great 
college,  Alice  E.  Freeman ;  the  wise  helper  of  all  who 
suffer  under  unjust  conditions  in  city  life,  Jane  Ad- 
dams  ;  and  the  writer  of  a  book  that  has  had  a  national 
and  world-wide  influence,  Harriet  Beecher  Stowe. 

It  heartens  us  up  a  bit  to  name  over  examples  like 
these.  They  give  us  a  vista  and  a  hope.  But  now  and 
then  there  is  a  Country  Girl  who  would  rather  have, 
say,  a  better  pair  of  stilts  over  the  morass  or  a  stronger 


THE  COUNTRY  GIRL  175 

rope  thrown  to  her  across  the  quicksand,  than  a  volume 
of  "Who's  Who"  tossed  carelessly  to  her  in  her  dif- 
ficulties. For  all  the  country  girls  on  their  farms  do 
not  sing  at  their  work.  They  are  not  idle,  heaven 
knows ! — ibut  their  work  does  not  invariably  inspire  the 
appreciation  it  deserves. 

Of  course  no  one  would  wish  to  claim  that  the  young 
woman  in  the  farmstead  is  of  more  importance  than 
other  members  of  the  home ;  but  as  a  chain  will  break  if 
one  link  fails,  so  the  farmstead  will  be  ruined  if  it  lacks 
the  cooperation  of  the  daughter.  She  has,  at  least, 
a  function  all  her  own;  and  the  happiness  that  comes 
through  normal  growth  must  be  hers  in  order  that  she 
may  fulfil  her  mission.  The  farmstead  girl  must  take 
her  place  in  the  farmstead  or  the  farmstead  unit  will 
lack  one  of  its  component  parts  and  fall  to  pieces.  It 
is  her  patriotic  duty ;  it  is  her  home  and  family  duty ; 
and  it  is  her  greatest  happiness.  The  young  woman  on 
the  farm  must  grow  up  with  the  idea  that  she  is  essential 
to  the  progress  of  country  life  and  therefore  of  the 
national  life  and  that  a  career  is  before  her  just  as 
much  as  if  she  were  aiming  to  be  an  artist  or  a  writer  or 
a  missionary.  This  purpose  makes  her  life  worth  while ; 
she  must  conserve  her  health  for  this ;  she  must  develop 
her  powers  for  this;  she  must  train  herself  heroically 
for  this. 


THE  FARMER  AS  A  MAN  OF  BUSINESS 


XIV 

BUSINESS  METHODS  IN  FARMING  * 
Oscar  H.  Benson 

America  is  the  land  of  farms,  and  agriculture  is  its 
most  important  and  fundamental  industry.  All  other 
occupations  must  go  back  to  the  soil,  either  directly 
or  indirectly,  for  their  support,  if  not  for  their  very 
existence.  The  success  and  welfare  of  every  class  of 
our  population,  therefore,  depend  on  the  business  of 
farming. 

The  United  States  is  especially  favored  in  the  fertil- 
ity of  its  virgin  soil,  its  vast  areas  of  tillable  land,  and 
its  wide  ranges  of  climate  adapted  to  the  growing  of 
many  crops.  America  leads  the  world  in  agricultural 
opportunity.  No  other  people  possess  the  advantages 
and  natural  wealth  that  we  have  in  our  farms. 

Yet  the  very  fact  that  our  soil  is  rich  and  our  land 
plentiful  contains  an  element  of  danger.  For  nature'? 
kindness  and  prodigality  have  led  us  into  carelessness  in 
the  use  of  this,  the  most  important  of  our  natural  re- 
sources. We  have  been  almost  criminally  wasteful  of 
the  fertility  of  our  soil. 

Our  first  care  has  been  to  get  the  largest  possible 
returns  out  of  a  given  amount  of  highly  expensive  labor 
— for  land  has  been  plentiful  and  cheap,  while  labor  has 

*  From  "Agriculture  and  the  Farming  Business,"  by  Oscar  H.  Benson 
and  Oeorgei  Herbert  Betts.  Copyright,  1917.  Used  by  special  permission 
of  the  publishers,  The  Bobbs-Merrill  Comp'any. 

179 


180  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

been  dear.  In  few  regions  have  we  learned  the  meaning 
of  intensive  farming  such  as  must  constantly  be  prac- 
tised in  most  countries  of  Europe  and  Asia  in  order  to 
feed  the  population. 

When  more  food  has  seemed  necessary  for  our  ever- 
increasing  population,  we  have  only  "gone  West"  and 
opened  up  fields  of  virgin  territory.  Often  this  has  been 
done  after  robbing  the  eastern  or  southern  soil  of  most 
of  its  fertility.  Here  the  older  fields  have  been  given 
over  to  idleness  for  the  more  promising  fields  of  the 
West.  During  the  last  three  hundred  years  of  Amer- 
ican history,  we  have  been  continually  looking  to  the 
frontier  states  for  farms  and  future  homes.  First,  the 
white-covered  "prairie  schooners,"  and,  later,  the  rail- 
way trains  have  carried  a  sturdy  race  of  pioneers 
toward  the  setting  sun  and  this  country,  the  dream  of 
plenty. 

This  constantly  moving  population  has  been  the 
direct  cause  of  the  rapid  settlement  and  development 
of  many  of  our  best  agricultural  sections.  It  has  given 
us  an  enterprising  and  progressive  farming  population, 
— ^men  and  women  consecrated  to  the  cause  of  trans- 
forming wild  prairies  and  untamed  forests  into  fertile 
acres  and  productive  fields.  Everywhere  they  have 
gone  we  now  find  beautiful  gardens,  orchards,  and  homes 
as  monuments  to  their  endurance,  industry,  and  per- 
sistence. 

The  frontiers  of  this  nation,  however,  are  fast  be- 
coming a  thing  of  the  past.  Most  of  our  best  land 
has  already  been  opened  up  to  settlement  and  divided 
into  farms.  We  now  have  under  cultivation  the  larger 
part  of  the  land  available  to  feed  our  ever-increasing 


BUSINESS  METHODS  IN  FARMING     181 

population.  True,  there  are  vast  fields  of  our  great 
plains  and  millions  of  acres  of  forest  land  yet  to  be 
reclaimed.  All  this,  however,  will  have  to  be  made 
productive  at  much  greater  expense  of  money  and 
energy  than  was  required  for  the  earlier  lands  now  oc- 
cupied by  the  American  farmers.  Most  of  the  land 
in  order  to  be  put  under  tillage  will  require  permanent 
and  costly  systems  of  irrigation.  Such  regions  will 
finally  be  reclaimed  by  science  and  good  business  man- 
agement ;  for  we  need  the  land,  and  must  have  it.  Both 
federal  and  state  governments  are  even  now  doing  all 
in  their  power  to  aid  in  its  reclamation.  But  we  should 
first  of  all  conserve  and  use  to  the  best  advantage  the 
land  we  now  have  under  cultivation. 

The  tiller  of  the  soil  is  one  of  our  most  important 
economic  factors.  On  his  success  and  prosperity  the 
welfare  of  the  nation  depends.  His  intelligence  and 
progress  will  have  a  far-reaching  effect  upon  our  entire 
industrial  history,  and  will  go  far  to  determine  our 
place  among  nations.  We  have  no  peasantry.  Amer- 
ican farmers,  as  a  class,  are  intelligent,  they  are  am- 
bitious, they  are  men  of  affairs.  The  American  farmer 
is  not  infrequently  called  upon  to  serve  as  state  legis- 
lator, congressman,  or  senator.  From  his  ranks  we 
have  taken  governors  and  presidents. 

In  all  American  industries  there  have  recently  been 
great  changes.  Inventions,  better  education,  and  a 
new  outlook  upon  life  have  led  to  prosperity ;  the 
farming  business  and  this  prosperity  have  worked 
toward  greater  efficiency.  During  the  past  generation, 
and  especially  during  the  past  ten  years,  the  entire 
face  of  the  earth  industrially  has  been  making  over 


182  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

verj  rapidly.  New  manufacturing  machinery  has  been 
introduced,  greater  systems  devised,  the  cost  of  produc- 
tion reduced  and  the  amount  increased. 

Among  all  of  our  industries,  however,  none  has  ex- 
perienced a  greater  growth  and  development  than  the 
business  of  farming.  It  is  no  longer  to  be  classed  as 
unskilled  labor,  a  catch-all  job  for  the  man  who  can- 
not find  an  opening  elsewhere.  The  farmer  of  to-day 
would  find  himself  greatly  handicapped  if  he  should 
undertake  to  think  and  act  in  terms  of  the  past.  A 
generation  ago  one  could  find  plenty  of  careless  prac- 
titioners, but  almost  no  practical  scientists  among  our 
fanners ;  on  the  other  hand,  there  were  a  considerable 
number  known  as  agricultural  theorists,  but  who  knew 
little  or  nothing  about  real  farm  practice.  Conse- 
quently, there  developed  misunderstanding  between  the 
practitioner  and  the  scientist.  They  had  very  little  of 
common  interest. 

The  progressive  farmers  of  to-day,  however,  arc 
practical  scientists ;  they  know  how  to  translate  scien- 
tific information  into  common  practice.  To  succeed  in 
farming,  one  must  understand  the  care  of  the  soil  and 
liow  to  conserve  it ;  he  must  be  thoroughly  informed  in 
matters  of  fertilizing,  systems  of  rotating  crops  and 
the  tillage  of  various  soils.  Every  farmer  must  be  a 
business  manager,  salesman,  bookkeeper,  and  an  all- 
around  man  of  ability  and  skill.  In  a  measure,  the 
farmer  must  be  both  a  bacteriologist  and  an  entomolo- 
gist, for  unless  he  knows  how  to  combat  the  insect  pests 
and  plant  diseases  of  growing  crops,  trees,  and  farm 
animals,  he  will  sooner  or  later  meet  his  Waterloo  in 
the  battle  with  these  enemies. 


BUSINESS  METHODS  IN  FARMING     183 

Scientific  breeding  of  stock  and  the  fitting  of  every 
farm  enterprise  into  the  farming  business  as  a  whole 
are  of  utmost  importance.  A  man  must  understand 
markets  and  methods  of  marketing.  The  adjustment 
of  time  in  the  use  of  labor,  machinery,  animals,  and 
acres,  so  as  to  secure  a  maximum  return  from  a  mini- 
mum investment,  this  is  most  imperative  in  these  days 
of  business  competition  and  ever-increasing  land  and 
food  values. 

The  home  is  the  true  center  of  all  farm  interests  and 
activities.  It  is  to  build  homes  that  we  buy  our  farms, 
build  up*  our  enterprises  and  apply  our  best  skill  in 
labor.  If  the  farm  neglects  the  domestic  life,  the  hap- 
piness and  well-being  of  the  family,  if  it  forgets  its 
obligations  to  the  community,  the  church  and  state, 
not  only*  the  farm,  but  society  in  general  surely  will 
suffer  the  consequences.  All  of  these  relations  and 
many  others  call  for*  the- greatest  degree  of  intelligence, 
for  good  business,  sense,  and  for  constant  fidelity  to  the 
cause  of  American  rural  life  as  well  as  all-around  farm 
efficiency. 

Recent  years  "have  shown  increased  and  unusual  inter- 
est on  the  part  of  the  whole  world  in  the  business  of 
farming.  This  is  not  merely  philanthropic,  nor  is  it  a 
sentimental  necessity.  People  in  other  occupations, 
particularly  those  in  business  and  commerce,  have  come 
to  appreciate  that  farming  is  the  economic  basis  of 
every  type  of  work  and  enterprise.  All  members  of 
society  to-day  wis'h  the  farmer  well,  and  are  willing  to 
advance  his  prosperity,  not  alone  because  they  are 
interested  in  the  farmer  as  a  social  equal  and  a  fellow 
citizen,  but  because  they  recognize  that  they  must  ulti- 


184  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

mately  go  back  to  the  tiller  of  the  soil  for  food,  shelter, 
and  practically  all  the  comforts  of  life.  They  want  the 
farmer  to  raise  larger  -and  better  crops,  produce  more 
and  better  stock,  and  himself  be  happy  and  prosperous 
because  of  the  inevitable  prosperity  that  it  brings  to  all 
o-thers. 

At.  the  present  time  we  are  told  that  the  American 
population  is  increasing  many  times  faster  than  Is  the 
production  of  our  food  supplies.  During  the  last 
twenty  years  the  cost,  of  living  has  practically  doubled. 
If  this  continues  for  the  next  decade.  It  will  be  difficult 
to  judge  the  economic  and  social  consequences.  It  is, 
therefore,  important  that-  every  acre  of  land  in  the 
United  States  be  made  increasingly  efficient,  to  produce 
more  and  better  food.  And.  this  means  intensive  farm- 
ing; but  this  does  not  necessarily  bar  extensive  farming. 

There  Is  yet  a  large  area  of  our  land  untouched  by 
the  hand  of  tillage.  On  these  barren  acres,  which 
science  and  business  enterprise  will  j^et  make  fruitful, 
there  is  room  for  thousands  of  those  who  are  now  living 
in  filth,  poverty,  and  obscurity  in  the  congested  centers 
of  our  large  cities.  But  they  must  be  able  to  possess 
themselves  of  the  promised  land — they  must  be  trained 
to  the  business  of  farming. 

So  also  in  the  southern  states,  where  the  growing 
season  is  long,  rainfall  plentiful,  and  where  every  con- 
ceivable kind  of  food  will  grow  and  thrive,  there  is  only 
a  comparatively  small  percentage  of  the  total  area  of 
the  land  under  cultivation.  When  one  travels  over 
these  areas  of  untilled  acres  which  will  surely  one  day 
be  the  garden  spot  of  America,  he  cannot  but  feel  that 
some  very   definite  policy  should  be   adopted   toward 


BUSINESS  METHODS  IN  FARMING     185 

offering  to  the  millions  of  our  poverty-stricken  city 
dwellers  a  chance  to  work  out  their  salvation  and  be 
better  fed  from  the  soil.  But  this  cannot  be  done 
simply  by  transferring  them  from  city  to  open  country. 
They  must  first  be  educated  in  the  science  and  practice 
of  agriculture,  stock-raising,  and  farm  management, 
else  they  would  suffer  in  the  country  as  surely  as  in  the 
city. 

The  new  interest  in  agriculture  has  resulted  in  the 
organization  of  many  agencies  to  help-  the  farmer.  The 
federal  government  is  now  spending  millions  of  dollars 
every  year  in  agricultural  extension  work,  farm  demon- 
strations, farm  surveys,  experimentation,  and  in  scien- 
tific reseal"^:h  in  agriculture.  New  varieties  of  crops  are 
being  tested  and  new  breeds  of  animals  produced.  Suc- 
cessful attempts  are  being  made  to  control  the  ravages 
caused  by  insect  and  plant  enemies  of  farm  crops  and 
animals,  and  many  other  lines  of  investigation  pursued. 
Every  state  has  its  experiment  station,  its  extension 
force  and  its  college  of  agriculture,  with  an  array  of 
farm  experts  who  are  doing  everything,  in  their  power 
to  advance  the  interests  of  agriculture  and  the  farmer. 
The  nation  and  the  state  join  in  employing  farm. agents, 
trained  in  both  practical  and  scientific  agriculture,  to 
work  with  the  farmers  in  the  solution  of  their  immediate 
problems.  Farm  bulletins  are  being  printed  and  dis- 
tributed free  of  charge  by  the  United  States  Depart- 
ment of  Agriculture  and  the  state  agricultural  colleges. 
Extension  lectures  and  agricultural  experts  are  going 
into  every  community,  teaching  the  application  of 
science  to  all  crop  and  animal  production.  Various 
commercial    organizations,    bajikers'    associations    and 


186  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

business  men's  clubs  are  everywhere*  contributing  gen- 
erously to  the  advancement  of  agricultural  education 
and  progress. 

The  farmers  themselves  are  in  most  instances  respond- 
ing to  their  opportunities  and  endeavoring  faithfully 
to  meet  the  many  new.  problems  that  bave  been  thrust 
upon  them.  Progressive  farmers  everywhere  are  eagerly 
studying  the  scientific  investigations  being  made  in  the 
field  of  agriculture.  They  are  reading  the  books  and 
bulletins,  attending  the  agricultural  short  courses  at 
the  state  colleges,  supporting  farmers*  institutes,  study- 
ing stock  and  grain  judging  and  in  every  way  doing 
their  best  to  place  farming  upon  the  scientific  basis 
that  our  new  conditions  demand. 

The  business  of  farming  to-day  offers  a  career  second 
to  none  to  be  found  among  the  industrial  or  business 
vocations.  It  has  opportunities  for  the  man  of  intelli- 
gence and  ambition.  It  requires  and  rewards  initiative 
and  enterprise.  It  demands  and  is  willing  to  pay  for  the 
best  intellect  and  industry  that  our  country  affords. 
The  farmer  will  always  he  an  important  factor  in 
American  wealth  and  progress,  and  is  destined  to  take 
still  higher  rank  as  a  contributor  to  industrial  and 
social  welfare. 


XV 

FARM  MANAGEMENT— A  NEW  SCIENCE  * 
W.  J.  Spillman 

Agbicultural  science  may  be  said  to  have  had  its 
beginning  with  the  studies  of  Bousingault,  the  dis- 
tinguished French  scientist,  who  in  the  year  1804  began 
a  series  of  experiments  to  determine  the  usefulness  of 
certain  chemical  substances  as  sources  of  plant  food. 
Enormous  strides  have  been  made  since  that  time.  A 
whole  flock  of  sciences  has  grown  up  around  agriculture 
as  a  center,  and  we  now  have  numerous  kinds  of  agri- 
cultural specialists.  Some  investigators  limit  them- 
selves to  the  stud}'^  of  soils ;  others  confine  their  attention 
to  the  growing  of  field  crops ;  others  to  garden  crops 
and  fruits ;  some  study  only  plant  diseases ;  others  the 
diseases  of  animals.  The  science  of  nutrition  has  be- 
come an  important  phase  of  agricultural  science.  We 
might  go  on  enumerating  dozens  of  specialties  that  now 
have  their  followers. 

It  was  natural  that  these  early  investigators  should 
attack  the  problems  of  farming  from  the  standpoint  of 
sciences  in  which  they  had  had  their  training.  Thus 
the  chemist  becomes  interested  in  the  application  of  his 
science  to  the  problems  of  farming,  and  develops  Agri- 
cultural Chemistry.  The  botanist  becomes  an  agrono- 
mist— a  man  who  specializes  in  growing  crops. 

*  From  Tractor  Farming,  April,  1919,  by  permission  of  the  author  and 
the  International  Harvester  Company  of  America. 

187 


188  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

Under  the  impulse  of  these  specialists  we  developed 
the  slogan:  "He  who  grows  two  blades  of  grass  where 
one  grew  before  is  a  greater  public  benefactor  than  he 
who  rules  a  city."  The  fact  that  the  farmer  who  grew 
the  two  blades  often  got  less  for  them  than  he  formerly 
got  for  one  seemed  to  be  overlooked.  Much  emphasis 
was  placed  on  the  dignity  of  the  farmers'  calling,  which 
was  to  "feed  the  world." 

Finally  there  came  along  a  man  whose  thinking  was 
cut  on  the  bias.  He  called  attention  to  the  fact  that 
men  had  been  farming  for  many  thousand  years  before 
anyone  ever  thought  of  any  kind  of  science.  In  fact, 
civilization  began  when  men  began  to  cultivate  crops. 
The  distinguished  mark  between  the  earliest  civilized 
communities  and  the  savage  hordes  that  surrounded 
them  was  a  settled  agriculture.  This  man,  whose 
mental  pattern  had  been  cut  crosswise  of  the  leather, 
insisted  that  during  the  thousands  of  years  men  had 
been  farming  they  had  learned  much  that  had  been 
handed  down  from  father  to  son  by  tradition.  He  even 
went  so  far  as  to  say  that  ninety  per  cent,  of  what  we 
know  about  farming  was  derived  from  experience,  the 
other  ten  per  cent,  from  scientific  investigation.  He 
proposed  that  we  take  up  the  study  of  farm  practice 
as  a  means  of  formulating  the  knowledge  gained  by 
practical  farmers  and  too  often  lost  again  when  the 
old  experienced  men  passed  out.  He  finally  found  an 
opportunity  to  make  such  studies  and  to  train  a  lot  of 
enthusiastic  young  men  to  do  likewise. 

But  a  very  unexpected  result  came  from  these  studies. 
They  had  not  proceeded  far  when  it  became  apparent 
that  there  lay  hidden  in  the  experience  of  practical 


FARM  MANAGEMENT  189 

farmers  a  new  science  that  no  one  had  ever  recog- 
nized. This  science  was  later  named  Farm  Manage- 
ment. It  deals  with  the  principles  involved  in  making 
farming  profitable,  as  well  as  successful  from  the  stand- 
point of  feeding  and  clothing  the  world.  Amongst 
European  economists  who  have  studied  rural  economics 
the  idea  seems  to  be  quite  firmly  fixed  that  because  the 
average  small  farm  in  Europe  produces  greater  values 
per  acre  than  large  farms,  it  necessarily  follows  that 
all  farms  should  be  small.  We  look  at  this  matter 
quite  differently  in  America.  We  are  not  so  much  con- 
cerned about  the  return  per  acre.  The  point  we  empha- 
size is  the  return  per  man.  If  a  farm  family  can  make 
a  better  living  on  100  acres  from  which  they  can  secure 
a  return  of  $20  per  acre  than  on  20  acres  from  which 
they  get  a  return  of  $50  per  acre,  then  we  advise  the 
hundred-acre  farm.  We  think  it  is  better  for  the 
country  as  a  whole  to  have  farm  families  making  $2,000 
than  $1,000  a  year. 

Perhaps  the  first  important  lesson  learned  from  the 
new  science  of  Farm  IVfanagement  was  the  fact  that  the 
doctrine  of  the  "small  farm  well-tilled"  is  a  fallacy.  We 
have  substituted  for  this  doctrine  the  better  one  of  "a 
good  living  and  ten  per  cent."  for  every  farm  family — 
five  per  cent,  as  interest  on  the  investment  and  five  per 
cent,  as  wages  for  labor  and  management  on  the  part 
of  the  farm  operator. 

In  every  case  where  farm  management  surveys  have 
been  made,  when  the  farms  are  divided  into  groups  based 
on  size  of  farm,  and  only  farms  of  the  same  general  type 
are  considered,  it  was  found  that  families  on  the  smaller 
farms  were  not  making  an  adequate  living.    In  general 


190  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

the  best  results  are  secured  when  the  farm  is  of  such 
size  and  so  organized  that  it  will  give  full  employment 
to  two  men,  which  is  about  the  proper  size  to  give  an 
average  farm  family  opportunity  to  utilize  their  full 
earning  capacity  without  making  themselves  slaves  to 
their  work.  In  other  words,  the  science  of  farm  man- 
agement has  taught  us  that  best  results  are  secured 
all  around  on  family  farms. 

Farm    management    investigators    have     developed 
simple  methods  of  analyzing  the  business  of  a  farm  in 
such  manner  as  to  show  the  profit  or  loss   from  the 
year's  operations.    If  the  farm  business  is  not  too  com- 
plex the  farmer  himself  can  fill  in  one  of  these  "survey" 
blanks  and  find  what  his  profit  or  loss  for  the  year  has 
been.     He  can  do  it  in  any  case  if  he  will  keep  a  few 
simple  records  of  his  sales  and  purchases.     By  ana- 
lyzing the  business  of  a  large  number  of  farms  in  the 
same  community  it  is  easily  possible  to  tell  what  types 
of  farming  are  most  profitable  in  that  community.   Not 
only  that,  but  it  is  possible  to  tell  what  acreage  of  each 
of  the  leading  crops  should  be  grown  on  the  average 
farm    for    best    results.      Thus,    in    Chester    County, 
Pennsylvania,  it  was  found  that  those  farmers  who  had 
two  years  of  corn  in  their  rotation  instead  of  one  year 
made  much  more  money.     Those  who  grew  no  oats  in 
this  particular  locality  made  more  money  than  those 
who  did.     Those  who  had  about  forty  to  forty-five  per 
cent,  of  their  land  in  hay  made  more  than  those  who 
had  more  or  less  hay   acreage.      These   surveys  have 
been  of  much  help  to  the  farmers  in  the  regions  where 
they  have  been  made,  and  they  should  be  made  in  every 
important  agricultural  region  of  the  country  every  few 


FARM  MANAGEMENT  191 

years.  They  would  help  to  keep  agriculture  on  an  even 
keel  by  showing  when  changes  in  cropping  systems  and 
kinds  of  live  stock  are  needed,  and  what  these  changes 
should  be. 

It  has,  of  course,  always  been  known  that  farmers 
who  keep  their  land  fertile  made  more  profit  than  those 
who  let  their  land  run  down.  But  farm  management 
surveys  have  given  this  fact  more  definite  meaning. 
They  show  just  how  much  a  given  increase  in  yield 
would  add  to  the  profit  in  farming.  Sometimes  it  hap- 
pens that  profits  can  be  increased  much  more  rapidly 
by  concentrating  attention  on  something  else  than  in- 
creased yield  per  acre.  Thus  the  easiest  way  to  in- 
crease profits  on  a  given  farm  may  be  to  increase  or 
even  to  decrease  the  number  or  kind  of  dairy  cows  kept, 
to  cut  down  the  number  of  work  horses  required  by 
making  some  insignificant  change  in  the  relative  acre- 
age of  the  crops  grown,  by  introducing  a  tractor  that 
will  enable  the  operator  to  get  his  plowing  done  more 
promptly,  by  increasing  or  decreasing  the  number  of 
hogs  or  steers  fed,  or  in  any  one  of  a  hundred  other 
ways. .  In  one  case  a  careful  study  of  a  farm  that  was 
making  no  profit  revealed  the  fact  that  it  had  the  best 
rotation  for  its  region ;  that  its  yields  per  acre  were 
just  about  what  they  should  be;  that  the  number  of 
cows  and  the  quality  of  these  cows  were  all  that  could 
be  desired.  The  owner  lived  on  the  farm,  but  conducted 
a  law  business  in  a  near-by  town,  and  could  not  give  the 
farm  very  close  supervision.  His  foreman  was  an  old 
man  who  had  two  sons  and  three  sons-in-law,  four  of 
whom  were  already  employed  on  this  farm,  and  the  old 
man  was  trying  to  make  a  place  for  the  fifth,  although 


192  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

the  farm  needed  only  two  good  men  to  keep  it  going  in 
good  shape.  The  labor  bill  ate  up  the  profits.  Had  we 
not  already  studied  the  question  of  the  amount  of  labor 
really  required  on  similar  farms  in  this  region  the  real 
trouble  on  this  farm  would  probably  have  been  over- 
looked. In  fact,  one  "expert"  had  already  told  the 
owner  that  the  real  solution  to  his  troubles  was  that 
his  cows  were  not  good  enough,  while  another  had  sug- 
gested that  if  he  would  substitute  alfalfa  for  clover  and 
timothy  his  troubles  would  disappear. 

The  science  of  farm  management  also  deals  with 
problems  of  farm  equipment.  One  trouble  we  find  with 
small  farms  is  that  they  cannot  afford  to  own  the  larger 
types  of  labor-saving  machinery  which  the}'  seriously 
need.  Many  farmers  who  keep  four  or  more  work  horses 
have  only  two-horse  implements.  If  they  would  equip 
their  farms  with  a  full  set  of  four-horse  implements 
they  could  save  nearly  half  of  what  they  now  pay  out 
to  hired  men,  for  fewer  men  could  do  the  work. 

Another  very  important  lesson  learned  in  farm  man- 
agement investigations  is  that  the  young  fellow  just 
starting  out  with  very  little  capital  can  make  about 
three  times  as  much  as  a  renter  than  he  can  as  the  owner 
of  the  land  he  tills.  The  reason  for  this  is  that  with 
his  small  capital  he  can  farm  four  or  five  times  as  much 
land  as  a  tenant  than  his  capital  would  permit  him  to 
own.  It  is  only  when  he  has  enough  ahead  to  make  a 
first  payment  on  a  good-sized  farm  that  it  pays  him 
to  pass  from  tenant  to  owner.  But  the  fact  that  farm- 
ers universally  become  owners  just  as  soon  as  they  are 
able  to  make  a  decent  living  on  land  of  their  own  shows 
that  there  are  compelling  reasons   for  owning  rather 


FARM  MANAGEMENT  193 

than  renting  land.  This  subject  is  too  big  to  discuss 
fully  here. 

Perhaps  the  most  important  contribution  the  science 
of  farm  management  has  made  to  farming  is  in  work- 
ing out  simple  methods  of  getting  at  the  cost  of  produc- 
tion on  the  farm.  Heretofore  many  farmers  have  been 
growing  wheat  or  keeping  cows  at  a  loss.  The  fact 
that  these  men  could  stay  in  business  at  all  made  some 
people  believe  they  must  be  making  a  profit.  But  this 
is  not  true.  We  can  all  agree  that  farmers  are  entitled 
to  wages  and  interest  on  their  investment.  But  if  a 
farmer  gets  two  per  cent,  interest  on  a  considerable 
investment,  and  fifty  cents  a  day  for  his  labor  a  good 
portion  of  the  3'ear,  he  can  still  live.  This  is  just  what 
wheat  growers  were  doing  when  wheat  was  selling  for 
eighty  cents  a  bushel.  It  is  also  what  milk  producers 
were  doing  when  butter  was  thirty  cents  a  pound  and 
milk  three  and  one  half  cents  a  quart.  Now  that  we 
can  easily  find  what  it  costs  to  produce  wheat  or  milk 
the  public  is  beginning  to  wake  up  to  the  fact  that 
farmers  have  not  always  been  getting  a  square  deal. 
The  force  of  public  opinion  has  compelled  milk  dealers 
in  the  big  cities  to  pay  prices  that  would  at  least  return 
to  the  farmer  his  cost  of  production.  The  result  is 
greatly  increased  prices  for  milk.  With  the  knowledge 
now  available  to  farmers  they  will  no  longer  go  ahead 
blindly  producing  food  and  clothing  at  prices  that 
return  them  less  than  a  fair  rate  of  interest  on  their 
investment  and  less  than  fair  wages  for  their  labor. 

The  science  of  farm  management  has  developed  meth- 
ods of  finding  what  the  manure  of  a  farm  animal  is 
really  worth  to  the  farmer ;  how  much  a  silo  adds  to  the 


194  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

farm  income ;  whether  it  pays  best  to  feed  steers  or  keep 
dairy  cows ;  whether  it  pays  best  to  have  one  acre  or 
five  acres  of  orchard;  whether  on  the  ordinary  farm 
it  is  more  profitable  to  keep  100  hens  or  300.  It  can 
be  made  to  deliver  answers  to  hundreds  of  other  ques- 
tions that  were  never  raised  at  all  until  we  began  to 
study  the  factors  that  make  for  greatest  profit  in 
farming.  This  new  science  has  been  slow  in  making  its 
way  in  the  agricultural  colleges.  It  has  met  with 
opposition  in  high  places.  But  it  is  gradually  winning 
its  way,  and  before  long  will  be  taught  in  every  school 
of  agriculture  in  the  land.  When  this  is  done  farming 
will  be  a  much  more  attractive  calling  than  it  is  even 
now.  Farmers  will  find  their  business  more  profitable. 
They  will  have  more  money  with  which  to  buy  from 
those  whose  business  is  to  supply  what  farmers  need  in 
their  business.  And  the  standard  of  living  on  the  farm 
will  be  higher  than  it  is  under  present  conditions. 


XVI 

HOW  THE  GOVERNMENT  WORKS  WITH  THE 
FARMER  * 

David  F.  Houston 

In  the  field  of  agriculture  there  is  much  to  be  done. 
This  fundamental  part  of  the  Nation's  industrial  life 
will  not  stand  still.  Constructive  action  must,  of 
necessity,  continue,  and  there  will  be  need  of  very  clear 
and  unbiased  thinking.  We  shall  have  our  troubles. 
We  shall  be  confronted  with  numerous  proposals  from 
the  enthusiast  with  limited  knowledge  and  less  sense  of 
direction.  The  tasks  confronting  us  in  agriculture  are 
tasks  not  of  reconstruction  but  rather  of  further  con- 
struction, of  selection,  and  emphasis.  I  am  confident 
that  the  agriculture  of  the  Nation  is  on  substantially 
sound  foundations  and  is  developing  in  the  right  direc- 
tion. Many  experienced  and  disciplined  minds  and 
agencies  in  all  parts  of  the  country  have  zealously  been 
stuying  the  problems  for  many  years,  with  increasing 
effectiveness  during  the  last  generation,  and  it  will  sur- 
prise me  if  many  novel  steps  of  large  proportions  are 
not  taken. 

Fanning,  of  course,  must  pay.  There  always  will  be 
farmers  enough  if  the  business  of  farming  is  made 
profitable  and  if  the  conditions  of  farm  life  are  made 

*  From  The  American  Review  of  Reviews,  November,  1919,  by  permission. 

195 


196  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

attractive  and  healthful.  The  farmer,  as  well  as  the 
industrial  worker,  is  entitled  to  a  living  wage  and  a 
reasonable  profit  on  the  investment.  He  is  entitled  also 
to  satisfactory  educational  opportunities  for  his  chil- 
dren and  to  the  benefits  of  modern  medical  science  and 
sanitation.  It  is  not  the  mission  of  the  farmers  simply 
to  supply  food  to  the  consumers  at  prices  which  the 
latter  desire  to  pay.  This  is  not  the  test.  It  is  no  more 
the  duty  of  the  farmers  to  supply  food  on  an  unprofit- 
able basis  than  it  would  be  for  the  manufacturer  to 
supply  manufactured  articles  on  an  unprofitable  basis. 
Each  should  want  the  other  industry  to  prosper  and  the 
producers  of  all  commodities  to  receive  a  fair  price  for 
what  they  produce. 

Of  course  everything  possible  is  being  done  to  enable 
the  farmer  to  produce  more  economically,  so  that  if 
prices  do  fall  he  will  not  sustain  a  loss,  or  so  great  a 
loss.  All  the  efforts  of  the  Department  of  Agriculture 
and  of  the  land-grant  colleges  have  this  aim.  They  are 
trying  to  bring  about  better  methods  of  cultivation, 
better  financing,  better  marketing,  the  elimination  of 
plant  and  animal  diseases  and  insect  pests,  and  the 
better  utilization  of  labor.  Much  has  been  done  in  this 
direction,  and  much  more  will  be  done  as  time  passes. 

Interest  in  land  for  homes  and  farms  increases  in  the 
Nation  as  the  population  grows.  It  has  become  more 
marked  as  the  area  of  public  land  suitable  and  avail- 
able for  agriculture  has  diminished.  It  is  intensified 
by  reason  of  the  suggestion  and  desire  that  returned 
soldiers  and  others  who  may  wish  to  secure  farms 
shall  have  an  opportunity  to  do  so  under  suitable 
conditions.     It  finds  expression,  too,  in  discussions  of 


HOW  THE  GOVERNMENT  WORKS      197 

the  number  of  tenant  farmers  and  in  its  meaning  and 
significance. 

That  there  is  room  in  the  Nation  for  many  more 
people  on  farms  is  clear.  The  United  States  proper 
contains  about  1,900,000,000  acres  of  land,  of  which 
an  area  of  1,140,000,000  acres,  or  60  per  cent.,  is  tilla- 
ble. Approximately  367,000,000  acres,  or  32  per  cent., 
of  this  was  planted  in  crops  in  1918.  In  other  words, 
for  every  100  acres  now  tilled  300  acres  may  be  utilized 
when  the  country  is  fully  settled.  Of  course,  much  of 
the  best  land,  especially  that  most  easily  brought  under 
cultivation  and  in  reasonably  easy  reach  of  large  con- 
suming centers,  is  in  use,  though  much  of  It,  possibly 
85  per  cent.,  is  not  yielding  full  returns.  Extension  of 
the  farmed  area  will  consequently  be  made  with  greater 
expense  for  clearing,  preparation,  drainage,  and  irri- 
gation, and  for  profitable  operation  will  involve  mar- 
keting arrangements  of  a  high  degree  of  perfection  and 
the  discriminating  selection  of  crops  having  a  relatively 
high  unit  value. 

Interest  in  land  for  homes  and  farms  increases  in  the 
Nation  as  the  population  grows.  It  has  become  more 
marked  as  the  area  of  public  land  suitable  and  avail- 
able for  agriculture  has  diminished.  It  is  intensified  by 
reason  of  the  suggestion  and  desire  that  returned 
soldiers  and  others  who  may  wish  to  secure  farms  shall 
have  an  opportunity  to  do  so  under  suitable  conditions. 
It  finds  expression,  too,  in  discussion  of  the  number  of 
tenant  farmers  and  in  its  meaning  and  significance. 

To  a  certain  extent,  we  are  still  pioneering  the  conti- 
nent, agriculturally  and  otherwise,  and  are  still  ex- 
porters of  food,  feedstuffs,  and  materials  for  clothing. 


198  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

With  wise  foresight  and  increased  emploj^ment  of 
scientific  practice,  under  the  stimulation  of  intelligent 
agencies,  we  can  take  care  of  and  provide  for  a  Tery 
much  larger  population  under  even  more  favorable  cir- 
cumstances and  in  greater  prosperity.  This  is  the  task 
to  which  the  Nation  has  set  itself  and  indicates  the 
responsibility  resting  upon  each  individual,  and  espe- 
cially upon  the  farming  population  and  state  and  fed- 
eral agencies  responsible  for  leadership.  We  have,  up 
to  the  present,  succeeded  in  this  enterprise.  In  the  years 
from  1900  to  1915  the  Nation  gained  a  population  of 
approximate]}^  22,000,000,  and  they  have  been  fed  and 
clothed,  in  large  measure,  from  domestic  sources.  It  is 
estimated  that  in  the  years  from  1915  to  1918  the 
population  increased  by  3,200,000,  of  which  a  very 
small  part  was  from  immigration.  We  shall,  perhaps, 
gain  as  many  more  in  the  next  fifteen  or  twenty  years, 
even  if  the  rate  of  immigration  should  not  be  main- 
tained, for  the  natural  growth  in  recent  years,  aver- 
aging about  three  fourths  of  a  million  a  year,  shows  an 
upward  tendency. 

It  would  be  desirable  to  facilitate  land  settlement  in 
more  orderly  fashion.  This  can  be  effected  in  a 
measure  by  systematic  effort  on  the  part  of  the  Federal 
Government,  the  States,  and  the  several  communities 
through  appropriate  agencies  to  furnish  more  reliable 
information,  intelligent  guidance,  and  well-considered 
settlement  plans.  The  Nation  has  suffered  not  a  little 
from  irresponsible  and  haphazard  private  direction  of 
settlement.  In  many  sections,  especially  in  the  newer 
and  more  rapidly  developing  ones,  the  situation  has  been 
complicated  by  the  activities  of  promoters  whose  main 


HOW  THE  GOVERNMENT  WORKS      199 

concern  was  to  dispose  of  their  properties.  They,  too, 
frequently  succeeded  in  attracting  farmers  to  localities 
remote  from  markets  where  they  either  failed  to  produce 
crops  or  met  with  disaster  through  lack  of  marketing 
arrangements. 

It  is  particularly  vital  that  by  every  feasible  means, 
the  process  of  acquiring  ownership  of  farms  -be  en- 
couraged and  hastened.  This  process  is  real  in  spite 
of  appearances  to  the  contrary.  It  has  been  too  gen- 
erally assumed  and  represented  that  tenancy  has  in- 
creased at  the  expense  of  ownership  and  that  we  are 
witnessing  agricultural  deterioration  in  this  direction. 
Tenancy  does  present  aspects  which  should  cause  great 
concern,  but  its  bright  sides  have  not  been  sufficiently 
considered.  The  situation  does  not  warrant  a  pessi- 
mistic conclusion.  In  the  thirty  years  from  1880  to 
1910  the  number  of  farms  in  the  United  States  in- 
creased from  4,009,000  to  6,362,000;  the  number  of 
those  owned  from  2,984,000  to  4,007,000,  a  gain  of 
1,023,000,  or  34.3  per  cent.;  and  the  number  operated 
by  tenants  from  1,025,000  to  2,355,000,  a  gain  of 
1,330,000,  or  129.9  per  cent.  But  in  1910  five  eighths 
of  the  farms  and  68  per  cent,  of  the  acreage  of  all  lands 
in  farms  were  operated  by  owners  and  65  per  cent,  of 
the  improved  lands.  The  number  of  farms  increased 
faster  than  the  agricultural  population.  The  only 
class  not  operating  farms  who  could  take  them  up  were 
the  younger  men,  and  it  is  largely  from  them  that  the 
class  of  tenants  has  been  recruited. 

In  a  recent  study  of  the  cases  of  9,000  farmers, 
mainly  in  the  Middle  Western  States  lying  in  the  Missis- 
sippi Valley,  it  was  found  that  more  than  90  per  cent. 


200  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

were  brought  up  on  farms;  that  Sll/i  per  cent,  re- 
mained on  their  father's  farms  until  they  became  owners 
and  27  per  cent,  until  they  became  tenants,  then 
owners ;  that  13^  per  cent,  passed  from  wage-earners 
to  ownership,  skipping  the  tenant  stage ;  and  that  18 
per  cent,  were  first  farm  boys,  then  wage-earners,  later 
tenants,  and  finally  owners.  It  is  stated  on  the  basis 
of  census  statistics,  that  76  per  cent,  of  the  farmers 
under  twenty-five  years  of  age  are  tenants,  while  the 
percentage  falls  with  age,  so  that  among  those  fifty- 
five  years  old  and  above  only  20  per  cent,  are  tenants. 
In  the  older  section  of  the  country  (except  in  the  South 
which  has  a  large  negro  population) ,  that  is,  in  the  New 
England  and  Middle  Atlantic  States,  the  tenant  farm- 
ers formed  a  smaller  proportion  in  1910  than  in  1900. 
This  is  also  the  case  with  the  Rocky  Mountains  and 
Pacific  Divisions,  where  there  has  been  a  relative 
abundance  of  lands.  The  conditions  on  the  whole, 
therefore,  are  not  in  the  direction  of  deterioration  but 
of  improvement.  'The  process  has  been  one  of  emer- 
gence of  wage  laborers  and  sons  of  farmers  first  to 
tenancy  and  then  to  ownership. 

The  last  six  years  have  been  especially  fruitful  of 
legislation  and  of  its  practical  application  for  the  bet- 
terment of  agriculture.  Special  provision  was  made 
for  the  solution  of  problems  in  behalf  of  agriculture, 
embracing  marketing  and  rural  finance.  The  Bureau 
of  Markets,  unique  of  its  kind  and  excelling  in  range  of 
activities  and  financial  support  any  other  similar  exist- 
ing organization,  was  created  and  is  rendering  effective 
service  in  a  great  number  of  directions.  Standards  for 
stable    agricultural   products    were    provided    for    and 


HOW  THE  GOVERNMENT  WORKS      201 

have  been  announced  and  applied  under  the  terms  of  the 
cotton-futures  and  grain-standards  acts.  Authority 
to  license  bonded  warehouses  which  handle  certain  agri- 
cultural products  was  given  to  the  Department,  and  the 
indications  are  that  with  normal  conditions  the  oper- 
ation of  the  act  will  result  in  the  better  storing  of  farm 
products,  the  stabilization  of  marketing  processes,  and 
the  issuance  of  more  easily  negotiable  warehouse  re- 
ceipts. The  agricultural  extension  machinery,  the 
greatest  educational  system  ever  devised  for  men  and 
women  engaged  in  their  daily  tasks,  had  very  large  and 
striking  development.  The  Federal  aid  road  act  re- 
sulted in  legislation  for  more  satisfactory  central  high- 
way agencies  in  many  states  and  the  systematic  plan- 
ning of  road  systems  throughout  the  Union.  To-day 
each  state  has  a  highway  authority,  with  the  requisite 
power  and  with  adequate  funds  to  meet  the  require- 
ments of  the  Federal  measure. 

The  Federal  reserve  act,  which  has  benefited  every 
citizen  through  its  influence  on  banking  throughout  the 
Union,  included  provisions  especially  designed  to  assist 
the  farming  population.  It  authorized  national  banks 
to  lend  money  on  farm  mortgages  and  recognized  the 
peculiar  needs  of  the  farmer  by  giving  his  paper  a 
maturity  period  of  six  months.  This  was  followed  by 
the  Federal  farm  loan  act  which  created  a  banking  sys- 
tem reaching  intimatelj'^  into  the  rural  districts  and 
operating  on  terms  suited  to  the  farm-owner's  needs. 
This  system  began  operations  under  the  troubled  con- 
ditions of  the  world  war,  and  its  activities  were  impeded 
by  the  vast  changes  incident  to  the  entry  of  this  coun- 
try into  the  conflict.   But,  in  spite  of  these  difficulties,  it 


202  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

has  made  remarkable  headway,  and  there  is  little  doubt 
that  its  development  will  be  rapid  and  will  more  than  fill 
the  expectations  of  the  people. 

The  operation  of  the  farm  loan  system,  through  ar- 
rangements by  which  those  who  have  'sold  land  take  a 
second  mortgage  subordinate  to  the  first  mortgage  of 
the  farm  loan  banks,  carrying  a  relatively  low  rate  of 
interest,  will  have  a  beneficial  influence.  If  further  de- 
velopments can  be  made  through  the  application  of  the 
principle  of  cooperation,  especially  in  the  formation  of 
personal  credit  unions,  the  conditions  will  be  more 
favorable.  In  the  meantime  special  attention  and 
study  should  be  given  to  the  terms  of  tenancy,  includ- 
ing the  lease  contract,  with  a  view  to  increase  the  inter- 
est both  of  the  landlord  and  of  the  tenant  in  soil  im- 
provement and  to  make  sure  that  there  is  an  equitable 
division  of  the  income. 

It  still  seems  clear  that  there  should  be  provided  a 
system  of  personal  credit  unions,  especially  for  the 
benefit  of  individuals  whose  -financial  circumstances  and 
scale  of  operations  make  it  difficult  for  them  to  secure 
accommodations  through  the  ordinary  channels.  Or- 
ganized commercial  banks  make  short-term  loans  of  a 
great  aggregate  volume  to  the  farmers  of  the  Nation 
possessing  the  requisite  individual  credit,  but  there  are 
many  farmers  who  because  of  their  circumstances,  are 
prevented  from  securing  the  accommodations  they  need. 

An  investigation  'by  the  Department  to  determine  the 
extent  to  which  fanners  in  the  Southern  States  were  de- 
pendent upon  credit  obtained  from  merchants  revealed 
the  fact  that  60  per  cent,  of  them  were  operating  under 
the  "advancing  system."     The  men  I  have  especially 


HOW  THE  GOVERNMENT  WORKS      203 

in  mind  are  those  whose  operations  are  on  a  small  scale 
and  who  are  not  in  most  cases  intimately  in  touch  with 
banking  machinery,  who  know  too  little  about  financial 
operations,  and  whose  cases  usually  do  not  receive  the 
affirmative  attention  and  sympathy  of  the  banker.  Such 
farmers  would  be  much  benefited  by  membership  in  co- 
operative credit  associations  or  unions. 

Of  course  there  are  still  other  farmers  whose  stand- 
ards of  living  and  productive  ability  are  low,  who 
usually  cultivate  the  less  satisfactory  lands,  who  might 
not  be  received  at  the  present  into  such  associations. 
This  class  peculiarly  excites  interest  and  sympathy,  but 
it  is  difficult  to  see  how  any  concrete  financial  arrange- 
ment will  reach  it  immediately.  The  great  things  that 
can  be  done  for  this  element  of  our  farming  population 
are  the  things  that  agricultural  agencies  are  doing  for 
all  classes  but  must  do  for  it  with  zeal.  The  approach 
to  the  solution  of  its  difficulty  is  an  educational  one, 
involving  better  farming,  marketing,  schools,  health  ar- 
rangements, and  more  sympathetic  aid  from  the  mer- 
chant and  the  banker.  If  the  business  men  of  the  towns 
and  cities  primarily  dependent  on  the  rural  districts 
realize  that  the  salvation  of  their  communities  depends 
on  the  development  of  the  back  country  and  will  give 
their  organizing  ability  to  the  solution  of  the  problem 
in  support  of  the  plans  of  the  organized  agricultural 
agencies  responsible  for  leadership,  much  headway  will 
be  made. 

The  foundation  for  effective  work  in  this  direction  is 
the  successful  promotion  of  cooperative  associations 
among  farmers,  not  only  for  better  finance  but  also  for 
better  production,  distribution,  and  better  living  con- 


204  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

ditions.  These  activities  are  of  primary  importance. 
At  the  same  time,  it  is  recognized  that  such  cooper- 
ation cannot  be  forced  upon  a  community,  but  must  be 
a  growth  resulting  from  the  volunteer,  intelligent  efforts 
of  the  farmers  themselves. 

The  Department  has  steadily  labored  especially  to 
promote  this  movement  by  conducting  educational  and 
demonstrational  work.  Field  agents  in  marketing  have 
been  placed  in  some  of  the  states  to  give  it  special  at- 
tention, and  the  county  agents  and  other  extension 
workers  have  rendered,  and  will  continue  to  render, 
valuable  assistance.  The  operations  of  the  Farm  Loan 
Board,  especially  in  promoting  the  creation  of  its  farm 
loan  association,  should  be  influential  and  highly 
beneficial. 

The  Department,  with  its  existing  forces  and  avail- 
able funds,  will  continue  to  foster  the  cooperative  move- 
ment and  to  keep  in  close  touch  with  the  Federal  Farm 
Loan  Board. 

Difficult  as  are  the  problems  of  production,  they  are 
relatively  simple  compared  with  those  of  distribution. 
Only  within  recent  years  have  agencies  been  created  by 
the  Federal  and  some  of  the  state  governments  to  assist 
in  the  marketing  of  farm  products.  Six  years  ago  the 
present  Bureau  of  Markets  began  its  work  as  a  small 
office  with  a  very  limited  appropriation,  and  it  has  been 
carefully  investigating  the  important  marketing  prob- 
lems, expanding  its  field  services,  administering  regu- 
latory laws  intended  to  correct  abuses,  and  encouraging 
cooperative  enterprises.  It  has  been  dealing  with  the 
many  important  questions  involved  in  the  standardiza- 
tion of  production,  the  proper  handling  and  packing  of 


HOW  THE  GOVERNMENT  WORKS      205 

farm  products,  the  use  of  standard  containers,  proper 
storage  on  farms,  in  transit,  and  at  marketing  centers, 
and  the  stimulation  of  the  formation  of  farmers'  co- 
operative selling  and  purchasing  agencies.  It  has  as- 
sisted in  the  preparation  and  installation  of  accounting 
systems  for,  and  has  rendered  active  service  to  farmers 
in  promoting  cooperative  enterprises.  It  has  furnished 
suggestions  for  state  legislation  governing  cooperative 
organization,  and  in  conjunction  with  the  state  authori- 
ties, it  employs  trained  men  to  advise  ^'tension  workers, 
including  the  county  agents,  with  reference  to  the 
marketing  of  their  products  and  market  organization 
problems.  It  conducts  an  inspection  service  on  fruits 
and  vegetables  at  163  important  central  markets. 

It  has  in  operation  a  nation-wide  market  news  service 
which  gives  to  producers  information  regarding  con- 
ditions in  the  markets  they  can  and  should  reach  and  to 
consumers  information  relative  to  current  supplies  and 
prices.  In  cooperation  with  a  number  of  states,  it 
issues  exchange  marketing  lists  periodically,  which  make 
known  to  county  agents,  breeders,  and  feeders  where 
surpluses  of  live  stock,  feed,  and  seeds  are  to  be  found. 
It  enforces  four  important  regulatory  measures, 
namely,  the  grain  standards,  Ihe  cotton  futures,  the 
standard  basket,  and  the  United  States  warehouse  acts, 
Avhich  were  enacted  to  correct  abuses  and  to  enable  the 
farmer  to  sell  his  products  more  nearly  for  what  they 
actually  are  worth. 

While  the  Bureau  is  already  dealing  with  most  of  the 
larger  problems  involved  in  the  distribution  of  agri- 
cultural commodities,  its  activities  could  be  profitably 
expanded  in  many  directions.    It  would  be  desirable,  for 


206  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

instance,  for  it  to  have  in  each  state  one  or  more  trained 
men  working  in  cooperation  with  the  state  authorities 
to  stimulate  cooperative  enterprises  and  to  aid  farmers 
in  solving  their  marketing  difficulties.  The  Market 
News  Service  could  be  extended  with  great  advantage  if 
the  requisite  funds  were  provided;  and  further  work 
should  be  done  in  the  matter  of  establishing  standards. 
Three  bills  already  have  been  introduced  in  Congress 
looking  toward  the  establishment  of  standards  for 
fruits  and  vegetables,  feeds  and  cotton ;  and  bills  are 
now  before  the  Congress  for  the  supervision  of  the  pack- 
ing plants  and  stockyards,  as  well  as  for  the  regulation 
of  cold  storage.  All  these  things  would  aid,  directly  or 
indirectly,  in  promoting  the  more  systematic  and 
orderly  marketing  of  farm  products. 

It  is  unnecessary  to  emphasize  the  vital  importance 
of  good  roads  both  to  urban  and  rural  communities.  In 
rural  communities  they  are  a  prerequisite  for  effec- 
tive agricultural  production  and  marketing,  for  good 
schools,  and  for  an  attractive  country  life.  During  the 
war  it  was  necessar}"^  to  curtail  road-construction  oper- 
ations, because  of  the  difficulty  of  securing  transporta- 
tion, materials,  and  the  requisite  services.  After  the 
signing  of  the  armistice,  the  work  was  actively  resumed 
and  vigorously  prosecuted  notwithstanding  the  fact 
that  conditions  were  abnormal  in  some  respects,  espe- 
cially in  reference  to  the  prices  of  materials  and 
supplies. 

The  Congress  at  its  last  session,  accepting  the  recom- 
mendations of  the  Department  of  Agriculture,  not  only 
made  available  from  the  Federal  Treasury  large  sums, 
aggregating  $209,000,000,  in  addition  to  the  original 


HOW  THE  GOVERNMENT  WORKS      207 

appropriation  of  $85,000,000  in  the  Federal  Aid  Road 
Act,  for  road  construction  in  cooperation  with  the 
states,  but  also  made  some  important  amendments  to 
the  Road  Act.  These  amendments  have  had  the  effect 
of  greatly  lessening  the  difficulties  of  selecting  and  con- 
structing needed  roads. 

The  Federal  Road  Act,  as  amended,  places  only  three 
limitations  on  the  type  of  road  to  be  constructed,  as 
follows :  The  road  must  be  substantial  in  character ;  it 
must  be  a  "public"  road  a  major  portion  of  which  is 
now  used,  or  can  be  used,  or  forms  a  connecting  link 
not  to  exceed  ten  miles  in  length  of  any  rbad  or  roads 
now  or  hereafter  used  for  the  transportation  of  the 
United  States  mails ;  and  the  amount  contributed  from 
the  Federal  Treasury  for  its  construction  must  not  ex- 
ceed 50  per  cent,  of  the  cost,  or,  in  any  event,  $20,000 
a  mile.  Under  the  terms  of  the  amended  act,  therefore, 
there  are  few  important  roads  which  will  be  debarred 
from  receiving  Federal  aid. 

It  will  thus  be  seen  that  a  broad  and  comprehensive 
road-building  program  has  been  inaugurated.  This 
program  is  being  vigorously  pushed,  and  the  indica- 
tions are  that  a  larger  volume  of  highway  construction 
will  have  been  accomplished  this  season  than  in  any 
previous  year  in  the  history  of  the  Nation.  Further- 
more, the  work  is  being  done  in  such  a  way  as  to  utilize 
to  the  best  advantage  the  road-building  experience  and 
facilities  of  the  whole  country. 

The  purpose  of  the  Federal  Aid  Road  Law  is  to 
encourage  the  construction  of  roads  of  a  substantial 
nature  by  the  states  and  to  provide  adequate  safe- 
guards for  securing  systematic  and  economical  action. 


208  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

Long  experience  has  shown  that  the  best  results  will  be 
secured  if  the  work  is  performed  under  the  supervision 
of  the  state  highway  departments,  the  method  of  the 
control  depending  upon  local  conditions.  The  greater 
the  administrative  and  technical  ability  of  these  de- 
partments, the  greater  will  be  their  usefulness  to  the 
taxpayers  of  the  state.  Under  the  Federal  Law,  the 
state  highway  departments  have  been  strengthened  and 
developed  in  a  way  that  could  not  be  equalled  under  any 
other  type  of  national  road  legislation  that  has  been 
suggested.  The  progress  that  has  been  made  in  this 
direction  is  very  gratifying  and  helpful. 

By  devoting  all  its  energy  to  helping  each  state 
inaugurate  the  work  as  quickly  and  as  extensively  as 
possible,  the  Department  of  Agriculture  multiplies  its 
resources  forty-eight  times,  and  is  a  cooperator  instead 
of  a  competitor  in  placing  men  and  materials  on  the 
highways  where  they  are  most  needed.  The  Depart- 
ment is  maintaining  the  closest  possible  touch  with  the 
state  highway  departments,  and,  at  its  request,  the 
American  Association  of  State  Highway  Officials  has 
designated  some  of  its  members  to  serve  on  an  advisory 
committee  to  cooperate  with  the  Department  in  the  ad- 
ministration and  execution  of  the  provisions  of  the 
Federal  Aid  Act. 

At  present,  in  order  to  secure  for  the  public  the 
benefits  of  the  provisions  of  the  Federal  Food  and 
Drugs  Act  with  reference  to  animal  feeds,  it  Is  neces- 
sary to  rely  on  the  appropriate  statutes  of  the  dif- 
ferent states.  These  are  not  uniform  and  there  are  a 
few  states  which  have  no  laws  that  can  be  invoked.  It  is 
believed  that  it  would  be  wise  to  have  a  comprehensive 


HOW  THE  GOVERNMENT  WORKS      209 

Federal  feed  law  placed  upon  the  statute  books,  under 
which  the  Government  could  proceed  in  a  uniform  man- 
ner and  secure  to  consumers  adequate  protection 
against  misbranded,  adulterated,  and  worthless  feeds 
entering  into  interstate  commerce.  It  is  obvious,  of 
course,  that  if  such  laws  could  be  enacted  they  should 
result  in  the  protection  not  only  of  the  consumer,  but 
also  of  the  honest  manufacturer  and  distributor. 

It  is  difficult  to  say  what  the  world  food  situation  will 
be  at  the  end  of  the  next  harvest  season  and  what  will 
be  the  course  of  prices  for  farm  products.  For  the  next 
twelve  months  the  world  will  subsist,  in  large  measure, 
on  food  products  already  produced.  The  consensus  of 
opinion,  so  far  as  the  production  program  of  this  nation 
is  concerned,  is  that  it  would  be  wise  for  the  farmers 
to  return  to  the  normal  as  promptly  as  possible  and  to 
resume  operations  best  suited  to  their  particular  con- 
ditions, realizing  that  the  present  calls  for  the  fullest 
measure  of  economical  production  and  for  the  practice 
of  thrift.  In  their  tasks  for  the  future,  as  in  the  past, 
they  will  have  at  their  disposal  and  for  their  aid  the 
services  of  the  Federal  and  state  departments  of  agri- 
culture and  of  the  great  state  land  grant  colleges — 
agencies  which  in  the  aggregate,  as  regards  numbers  of 
personnel,  activities,  and  financial  support,  exceed  those 
of  any  three  nations  in  the  world  combined. 


XVII 

PRINCIPLES  OF  EUROPEAN  LAND-CREDITS  * 
Dick  T.  Morgan 

There  is  a  crisis  in  land-credit  legislation !  The 
turning  point  has  been  reached.  The  critical  moment 
has  arrived.  An  emergency  exists.  An  exigency  con- 
fronts the  nation.  A  false  step  now  may  be  irretrace- 
able, a  blunder  at  this  time  may  be  incurable,  a  mis- 
take made  at  this  juncture  may  be  irretrievable,  and  an 
error  committed  in  the  pending  crisis  may  be  forever 
irreparable. 

In  this  crisis  In  land-credit  legislation  great  interests 
are  at  stake.  The  prosperity  of  6,500,000  farmers  is 
involved.  Forty-five  million  men,  women,  and  children 
on  our  farms,  and  untold  millions  to  follow  them,  are 
directly,  intensely,  and  vitally  interested.  The  fate  of 
agriculture — its  growth,  development,  and  expansion — 
the  annual  wealth  produced  thereby,  and  its  ability  to 
produce  an  adequate  supply  of  food  products  for  our 
rapidly  increasing  population,  depend  in  a  large 
measure  upon  the  outcome  of  the  pending  crisis. 

This  crisis  involves  more  than  the  physical  and 
material  well-being  of  our  farmers  and  their  families. 
The  sweep  of  its  influence  includes  their  intellectual 
growth,  their  social  welfare,  and  their  moral  and 
spiritual  development.     Its  Impress  will  tell  on  their 

*  From  "Land  Credits,"  by  permission  of  the  author. 

210 


EUROPEAN  LAND-CREDITS  211 

schools,  their  churches,  their  homes,  their  manhood  and 
womanhood,  and  upon  their  lives  and  their  hearts. 

The  result  of  this  crisis  will  determine  the  attitude 
of  our  Federal  government  toward  the  farmers  of  the 
United  States.  It  will  show  what  appreciation  this  gov- 
ernment has  for  the  12,500,000  people  who  toil  upon 
our  farms.  It  will  indicate  the  policy  of  this  govern- 
ment toward  these  people  and  their  industry.  Finally, 
it  will  show  what  respect  this  government  has  for  the 
rights  of  the  45,000,000  men,  women,  and  children  who 
reside  upon  our  farms. 

This  crisis  will  not  stop  with  the  farmers.  Its  effect 
will  not  be  restricted  to  agriculture.  Its  influence  will 
not  be  confined  to  rural  life.  Its  sway  will  not  be 
limited  to  the  country  districts.  It  will  involve  every 
industry,  business,  calling,  and  profession  of  life.  Its 
influence  will  extend  to  every  section  of  the  land,  to 
every  state  in  the  Union,  and  to  every  home  and  fire- 
side. Commerce,  manufacturing,  mining,  trade,  trans- 
portation, merchandising,  banking,  clerical  pursuit,  the 
learned  professions — all  are  interested.  The  rich  and 
the  poor,  the  millionaire  and  the  pauper,  labor  and 
capital,  employers  and  employees,  merchants,  artisans, 
day-laborers,  and  wage-earners — all  will  be  affected  by 
the  solution  of  the  existing  emergency  in  land-credit 
legislation. 

This  crisis  is  not  a  creature  of  the  imagination.  It 
is  not  an  illusion,  a  delusion,  a  fable,  a  dream,  or  a 
shadow.  It  is  real  and  tangible.  It  may  be  seen  and 
felt,  comprehended  and  understood.  It  extends  in  every 
direction,  touches  our  national  life  at  every  point,  and 
encompasses  the  whole  land. 


212  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

Settle  this  crisis  right  and  the  republic  will  be 
strengthened,  its  power  and  influence  will  be  augmented, 
its  prestige  will  be  enhanced,  its  fame  will  be  magnified, 
its  principles  and  ideals  will  be  emphasized  and  ac- 
centuated, its  resources  and  wealth  will  be  multiplied, 
its  security  will  be  increased,  its  hands  will  be  strength- 
ened, and  under  its  flag  will  dwell  a  better  citizenship, 
and  a  happier,  more  contented,  and  prosperous  people. 

All  European  land-credit  systems  which  provide  for 
long-term,  farm-mortgage  loans  are  alike  in  some  im- 
portant features.  Germany,  for  instance,  has  several 
classes  or  kinds  of  land-credit  institutions,  organized 
tinder  different  laws,  but  they  all  have  some  things  in 
common.  So  throughout  Europe  whatever  may  be  the 
character  of  the  institutions,  associations,  or  corpora- 
tions, whether  they  be  associations  of  borrowers,  or  or- 
ganizations of  lenders,  profit-sharing  or  non-profit- 
sharing,  conducted  for  gain  or  for  the  public  good, 
founded  by  private  capital,  or  endowed  by  the  state — 
they  are  alike  in  some  essential  principles,  features,  and 
characteristics.  Among  the  common  features  of  these 
institutions   may  be  mentioned  the  following: 

1.  They  are  all  authorized  by  law,  regulated  by 
statute,  and  are  subject  to  some  kind  of  state  or  gov- 
ernmental supervision. 

2.  They  all  make  unrecallable,  long-time,  reducible 
loans. 

3.  They  all  issue  long-time  bonds  or  debentures. 

4.  They  all  require  the  principal  debt  to  be  paid  by 
annual  or  semi-annual  amortization  payments. 

5.  All  make  their  bonds  or  debentures  absolutely  se- 


EUROPEAN  LAND-CREDITS  21  ;J 

1.  Authorized  by  Law.  Upon  these  fundamental 
propositions  the  land-credit  systems  of  Europe  are 
founded.  These  essential  features  must,  of  course,  be 
embodied  in  the  land-credit  system  of  the  United 
States.  Obviously  there  can  be  no  system  or  plan  of 
land-credit  without  legal  authority.  Through  state  or 
Federal  legislation  land-credit  institutions  must  be 
authorized.  Private  individuals  cannot  supply  agricul- 
ture with  credit.  In  this  country,  and  in  all  other 
countries,  ordinary  commercial  banks  have  failed  to 
supply  agriculture  with  proper  credit.  Banks  doing 
business  on  deposits,  subject  to  check,  are  unsuited  to 
extend  credit  on  land  security.  Individual  money 
lenders  are  unequal  to  the  task.  The  law  must  author- 
ize the  formation  of  institutions  especially  designed  to 
provide  agricultural  credit.  As  the  modern  business 
corporation  has  served  all  kinds  of  industrial  and  com- 
mercial enterprises,  so  it  must  serve  the  farmers  in 
supplying  them  with  credit.  The  farmers'  land-credit 
corporation  must  have  the  sanction  of  legislation.  It 
must  have  the  prestige  of  the  law  behind  it.  Without 
this  no  land-credit  institution  can  gain  and  hold  the 
confidence  of  the  public.  So  the  first  step  is  to  create, 
through  statutory  enactment,  artificial  persons — cor- 
porations, associations,  or  institutions — and  send  them 
forth  into  the  business  world,  clothed  with  the  authority 
of  the  law,  approved  and  sanctioned  by  the  Federal 
government,  designed,  delegated,  directed,  and  commis- 
sioned to  perform  the  definite,  specific  work  of  pro- 
viding agriculture  with  adequate  credit  facilities.  In 
addition  to  being  authorized  by  law,  they  must  be 
supervised  by  Federal  authority.     Some  of  the  land- 


214  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

credit  institutions  are  supervised  by  state  or  provincial 
authorities.  These  institutions  have,  however,  lost  by 
this  rather  than  gained.  There  has  been  some  discus- 
sion as  to  whether  our  land-credit  institutions  should 
be  state  or  Federal  institutions.  A  few  of  the  states 
have  authorized  the  organization  of  farm-credit  bank- 
ing institutions.  But  nothing  worth  while  can  be  ac- 
complished in  this  country  except  through  national 
legislation,  national  incorporation,  and  national  super- 
vision. This  supervision  can  hardly  be  too  severe. 
Anything  which  impairs  confidence  in  our  land-credit 
institutions  will  be  absolutely  fatal  to  their  permanency 
and  success.  The  Federal  government,  creating  these 
institutions,  must  see  to  it  that  their  business  is  con- 
ducted in  a  way  that  will  protect  both  borrowers  and 
investors,  and  insure  both  permanency  and  efficiency. 
The  law  itself  must  throw  around  them  such  general 
rules  as  will  standardize  their  business  methods  and 
keep  them  within  the  limits  of  perfect  safety.  But  be- 
yond this,  there  must  be  such  official  inspection,  over- 
sight, and  surveillance  as  will  preclude  losses  through 
dishonesty,  speculation,  negligence,  or  inefficiency. 

2.  Long-time  Loans.  In  Europe  long-time  loans  run 
from  ten  to  seventy-five  years.  Farm  loans  in  the 
United  States  generally  do  not -run  for  a  period  to  ex- 
ceed five  years.  In  other  words,  as  the  term  is  used  in 
Europe,  American  farmers  have  no  long-time  loans. 
This  is  one  great  defect  in  our  present  farm-loan  busi- 
ness. It  is  unjust  to  the  farmer  in  many  ways.  Mr. 
Oren  Taft,  Jr.,  of  Chicago,  who  has  had  extensive  ex- 
perience in  the  farm-loan  business,  in  an  article  in 
"Trust  Companies,"   in   September,   1904,   page   717, 


EUROPEAN  LAND-CREDITS  215 

referring  to  the  short-time  farm  loans  in  the  United 
States,  calls  attention  to  the  fact  that  on  the  average 
farm  loans  in  this  country  run  for  a  period  of  fifteen 
years,  though  on  an  average  they  are  made  for  less 
than  five  years,  thus  imposing  upon  borrowers  not  only 
great  annoyance,  but  also  heavy  expense  for  renewals 
of  loans. 

Land-credit  sj'stems  vary  somewhat  in  the  duration 
of  long-term  loans.  In  France  the  maximum  time  for 
which  a  farm  loan  may  be  made  is  75  years.  In  Ireland 
loans  may  be  made  for  GSVo  years,  in  Switzerland  for 
57  years,  in  Germany  561/^  years,  in  Sweden  56Vi> 
years,  in  Russia  55^  years,  in  Australia  541A  years,  in 
Japan  50  years,  in  Italy  50  years,  in  Austria  42  years, 
in  New  Zealand  361/2  years,  in  Chile  33  years,  and  in 
Finland  30  years.* 

There  are  many  advantages  to  the  borrower  in 
having  a  long-time  mortgage  loan  system.  Under  it, 
on  reasonable  notice,  he  is  entitled  to  pay  the  full 
amount  of  his  loan  at  any  time.  For  this  privilege  he 
pays  no  commission  or  bonus.  He  may  pay  all  or  any 
part  of  his  debt  at  reasonable  intervals.  He  is  thus 
in  a  position  to  take  advantage  of  any  reduction  in 
interest  rates.  If  he  makes  a  loan  for  $1,000  for  fifty 
years,  at  5  per  cent,  interest,  and  thereafter  at  any 
time  the  prevailing  rate  of  interest  lowers,  he  can  re- 
borrow at  the  lower  rate  and  pay  off  his  original  loan. 
On  the  other  hand,  if  he  borrows  at  4  per  cent.,  for 
fifty  years,  and  the  interest  rate  rises,  the  loan  institu- 
tion cannot  demand  a  higher  rate.  The  long-time  loan 
protects  the  farmer  against  misfortune.     In  farming, 

*  Herriclc,  page  211. 


216  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

as  in  other  lines  of  business,  misfortune  and  hard  times 
may  come.  Every  country  has  unfavorable  seasons. 
They  may  come  in  succession.  The  farmer  contends 
with  drouths,  storms,  floods,  insects,  and  diseases  in 
plant  and  animals.  Without  his  fault  a  year's  labor 
may  be  lost.  There  may  come  a  series  of  years  in  which 
he  fails  to  make  a  living.  Financially  he  falls  behind. 
Unexpectedly  he  finds  himself  in  straitened  financial 
circumstances.  Under  these  circumstances  he  cannot 
pay  a  short-time  mortgage,  when  it  is  due.  Renewals 
are  often  difficult  to  secure.  Sometimes  they  can  be 
secured  only  on  the  payment  of  a  large  commission  and 
higher  rates  of  interest.  With  a  long-time  farm  mort- 
gage the  farmer  has  ample  time  to  recoup  his  losses. 
In  long-time  loans  there  is  a  lifetime  in  which  to 
pay  the  principal.  Annual  payments  are  small. 
Borrowers  have  time  to  tide  over  failures,  misfortunes, 
unforeseen  and  unexpected  reverses  and  losses.  The 
peace  of  mind  which  these  privileges  afford  is  worth 
much  to  the  borrower  and  his  family.  The  man  carry- 
ing a  long-term  mortgage  loan  is  a  better  citizen  than 
the  one  who  lives  constantly  in  fear  of  foreclosure, 
ejectment,  and  loss  of  home.  This  is  an  asset  to  the 
community  and  the  State.  Under  the  short-term  mort- 
gage loan  practice  in  vogue  in  this  country  the  bor- 
rowers are  pressed  to  the  limit  to  meet  the  payment  of 
the  principal  of  their  debts.  They  and  their  families 
are  kept  under  constant  strain.  Every  effort  is  put 
forth.  Every  member  of  the  family  must  sacrifice. 
The  children  are  denied  educational  advantages.  They 
are  cut  off  from  opportunities  of  greater  usefulness. 
Even  if  the  borrower  succeeds  in  meeting  his  obliga- 


EUROPEAN  LAND-CREDITS  217 

tion  when  due,  the  cost  has  been  too  great.  A  long-term 
mortgage  loan  system  will,  therefore,  become  a  factor 
in  social  uplift,  in  conserving  and  improving  the 
physical  strength  of  our  farming  population,  in  ex- 
tending to  them  better  facilities  for  intellectual  de- 
velopment, and  in  enlarging,  broadening,  and  multi- 
plying their  opportunities  in  life.  The  long-time  farm 
mortgage  loan  enables  the  borrower  to  do  better  farm- 
ing. He  will  have  additional  funds  to  enlarge  his 
farming  operations,  to  provide  better  machinery,  im- 
plements, and  tools,  to  acquire  more  live  stock,  to  erect 
more  suitable  farm  buildings,  to  plant  orchards,  grow 
timber,  reclaim  unproductive  lands,  and  to  acquire 
many  other  things  which  will  make  the  farm  more  pro- 
ductive, more  profitable,  and  more  attractive.  The 
long-term  farm  loan  will  enable  the  average  farmer 
greatly  to  reduce  the  amount  of  his  personal  short-time 
indebtedness,  which  he  now  owes  his  local  banker,  or 
merchant  from  whom  he  buys  supplies  on  time.  These 
short-time  loans  are  on  personal  or  chattel  security ; 
ordinarily  they  run  at  a  high  rate  of  interest.  With 
longer  time  in  which  to  meet  the  farm-mortgage  in- 
debtedness, the  farmer  will  have  a  greater  surplus  of 
funds.  More  generally,  he  will  be  a  cash  customer  for 
the  merchant.  To  a  larger  extent  he  becomes  a  de- 
positor in  the  local  bank,  which  will  reap  a  profit  in 
loaning  his  funds  to  others.  Here,  it  might  be  added, 
it  is  that  the  establishment  of  a  long-term  system  of 
farm  land  mortgage  credit  will  benefit,  not  injure,  com- 
mercial banks.  The  vast  majority  of  these  banks  are 
comparatively  small  institutions,  located  in  farm  com- 
munities.    They  are  almost  entirely  dependent  upon 


218  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

agriculture.     Any  change  in  our  farm-credit  system 
which   increases   the   production   of   the   soil,   enlarges 
farming  operations,  or  augments  the  prosperity  of  the 
farmers,  wiU  add  to  the  value  of  the  capital  stock  of 
every  bank  located  in  a  farming  community,  and  will 
increase  its  dividends,  surplus,  and  profits.     The  com- 
mercial banks  should  be  enthusiastic  supporters  of  the 
movement  to  give  the  farmers  of  the  United  States  the 
very  best  system  of  land-credit  that  can  be  devised. 
Finally,   the   long-term    farm    mortgage    is    absolutely 
essential  to  meet  the  wants  of  tenants  and  other  persons 
of  limited  means  who  wish  to  acquire  farm  homesteads. 
It  is  true  that  we  do  not  have  in  this  country  liberated 
serfs    or   any    class    of   farmers    on    a    level    with   the 
peasants  of  some  of  the  European  countries.     How- 
ever, about  one  third  of  our  farmers  are  tenants.    The 
census   of  1910   shows   that  we  had  in   this    country 
6,361,502  farmers.     Two  million,  three  hundred  fifty- 
four  thousand,  six  hundred  and  seventy-six  of  these 
were  tenants.     It  is  not  necessary  to  enter  upon  an 
argument   to    show   the  evils   of   farm  tenancy.      All 
thoughtful   persons    recognize    the   importance   of    en- 
couraging home-owning  in  both  the  country  and  city. 
One  of  the  wisest  things  this  country  ever  did  was  to 
dedicate  the  public  domain  to  provide  homes  for  the 
homeless.     There  was  a  time  when  some  of  our  promi- 
nent  statesmen   contended   that   primarily    the   public 
domain  should  be  used  as  a  source  of  revenue  to  the  na- 
tional government.     For  some  years  it  was  so  used. 
The  free  homestead  law  did  not  pass  without  a  struggle. 
It  was  passed  by  both  Houses  of  Congress  once,  and 
vetoed  by  one  of  our  Presidents.     The  measure  finally 


EUROPEAN  LAND-CREDITS  219 

became  a  law  and  received  the  approval  of  Abraham 
Lincoln.  Vast  millions  of  dollars  were  thus  diverted 
from  the  national  treasury.  Indirectly  these  funds 
flowed  back  into  the  treasury  in  far  greater  abundance ; 
we  became  a  greater  and  stronger  nation ;  and  our 
citizenship  was  strengthened  in  loyalty,  fidelity,  and 
devotion  to  the  principles  of  our  free  government.  With 
the  cream  of  our  public  domain  already  gone,  this  gov- 
ernment should  enter  vigorously  upon  a  plan  to  pro- 
mote home-owning  among  our  citizenship.  Our  task 
is  not  so  great  or  so  difficult  as  that  which  confronted 
many  of  the  European  countries.  We  do  not  have  to 
deal  with  problems  which  confronted  Russia  when  she 
liberated  her  22,000,000  serfs.  We  do  not  need  to 
use  a  thousand  millions  of  dollars  in  funds  of  this 
government  which  England  will  probably  finally  expend 
in  acquiring  homes  for  the  peasants  of  Ireland.  It 
will  not  be  necessary  for  us  to  authorize  the  expropri- 
ation of  lands  in  private  ownership  to  secure  homes 
for  our  tenants  and  for  others  who  wish  to  acquire 
farm  homesteads.  If  we  establish  a  proper  system  of 
long-term  mortgage  loans,  modeled  after  the  best  sys- 
tems of  Europe,  with  reasonable  aid  in  the  funds  or 
credit  of  the  national  government,  the  tenancy  problem 
in  the  United  States  will  solve  itself.  And  as  the  years 
shall  go  by  we  shall  see  through  the  reports  of  our 
decennial  census  that  proportionately  our  farm  tenants 
are  growing  less,  that  we  are  making  substantial 
progress  in  reclaiming  waste  and  unproductive  lands, 
and  that  millions  of  our  people  through  long-term 
mortgage  credit  have  become  independent,  self-respect- 
ing,  happy,    patriotic    farm-home    owners. 


220  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

3.  The  Bonds  and  Debentures.  One  of  the  most  im- 
portant discoveries  in  the  world  was  the  invention  of 
the  farm-mortgage  bond  or  debenture  as  an  instrument 
to  promote  land-credit.  There  never  has  been  a  suc- 
cessful system  of  land-credit  established  in  any  coun- 
try that  does  not  utilize  the  mortgage  bond  or  deben- 
ture as  an  instrument  to  mobilize  and  liquefy  land 
values.  Through  the  mortgage  bond  or  debenture  the 
farm  mortgage  has  been  made  easily  negotiable,  and 
put  in  such  a  form  that  the  holder  may  realize  thereon 
immediately.  The  mortgage  bond  and  the  debenture 
in  eifect  are  the  same.  The  term  "mortgage  bond"  is 
used  to  indicate  bonds  or  securities  secured  by  certain 
specified  and  designated  mortgages.  The  "debenture" 
is  an  obligation  of  a  bank  or  other  institution,  secured 
not  by  a  number  of  specific  mortgages,  but  by  the  gen- 
eral assets  of  the  institution  issuing  the  debenture.  For 
instance,  the  Credit  Fonder  of  France  estimates  that  it 
will  need  $50,000,000  additional  money  on  which  to 
make  farm  mortgage  loans.  Under  the  law  it  may  issue 
and  sell  $50,000,000  in  debentures  even  before  it  makes 
the  loans,  while  a  bank,  issuing  mortgage  bonds,  would 
first  make  the  loans,  and  place  the  mortgages  in  trust 
as  a  special  security  for  the  bonds  issued  thereon.  Thus 
the  designated  mortgages  become  the  chief  security  for 
a  certain  issue  of  bonds,  and  the  institution  must  keep 
deposited  in  trust  farm  mortgages  to  secure  its  bonds 
in  an  amount  equal  to  the  total  of  bonds  issued.  The 
bonds  must  not  exceed  the  amount  of  mortgages  de- 
posited in  trust  to  secure  their  payment.  If  a  mort- 
gage is  paid,  another  mortgage  of  equal  face  value  must 
be  deposited  in  trust  in  lieu  of  it.     In  principle  and  in 


EUROPEAN  LAND-CREDITS  221 

practice  the  mortgage  bond  and  debenture  serve  the 
same  purpose.  The  Landschaften  of  Germany  issue 
debentures.  Their  debentures  in  amount  always  cor- 
respond with  the  amount  of  the  mortgages  held  by  the 
Landschaft.  This  must  be  true  because  the  Landschnft 
does  not  pay  the  borrower  the  cash,  but  simply  delivers 
to  him  bonds  in  an  amount  equal  to  his  mortgage.  The 
borrower  takes  the  bonds  and  disposes  of  them  him- 
self. He  may  sell  them  to  one  or  more  individuals,  or 
to  a  bank,  or  through  the  bank  of  the  Landschaft, 
which  has  been  in  many  cases  organized  especially  to 
aid  borrowers  to  dispose  of  their  bonds.  The  joint- 
stock  mortgage  banks  pay  their  loans  in  cash.  They 
issue  mortgage  bonds,  which  are  secured  by  designated 
farm  mortgages  of  an  equal  amount.  These  mort- 
gages are  invariably  deposited  in  trust  to  secure  the 
payment  of  the  bonds.  The  specific  mortgages  de- 
posited in  trust  are  not  the  sole  security  for  the  pay- 
ment of  mortgage  bonds.  The  mortgage  banks  are  re- 
quired to  set  aside  certain  reserve  or  guaranty  funds 
to  provide  against  losses  from  the  non-payment  of  the 
principal  or  interest  on  mortgages  held  in  trust. 
Finally,  of  course,  the  capital  of  the  mortgage  bank, 
its  surplus,  and  all  of  its  assets  would  be  used,  if 
necessary,  to  redeem  any  outstanding  mortgage  bond. 
Generally,  of  course,  the  bondholders  have  a  special 
and  prior  lien  over  other  creditors  upon  the  mort- 
gages deposited  in  trust  to  secure  bonds  issued  thereon. 
The  bond  and  debenture  are  the  farm  mortgage  in  an- 
other form.  The  farm-loan  institutions  collect  farm 
mortgages,  and  then,  by  the  authority  of  law  and 
under  governmental  supervision,  chanffc  their  form  into 


222  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

a  security  suitable  to  the  needs  and  wants  of  Investors, 
large  or  small,  and  In  form  and  character  correspond- 
ing to  securities  of  all  other  kinds,  familiar  to  the  finan- 
cial world.  The  farm  mortgages  lie  in  safe  seclusion. 
The  bond  and  debenture,  their  representatives,  are  out 
"In  company,"  commanding  recognition  even  above  the 
best  industrial  securities,  and  selling  practically  upon 
a  par  with  bonds  issued  by  the  greatest  and  strongest 
government  of  Europe. 

The  change  of  farm  mortgages  into  bonds  or  de- 
bentures is  like  the  process  of  mining,  modifying,  and 
purifying  minerals.  Iron,  copper,  lead,  zinc,  silver,  and 
gold,  as  taken  from  the  mines,  are  not  suitable  for  com- 
merce, but  through  various  processes  these  minerals  are 
refined  and  made  in  form  to  meet  the  needs  of  com- 
merce, industry,  the  arts,  and  the  innumerable  wants  of 
mankind.  So  through  mortgage  bonds  or  debentures 
farm  mortgages  are  changed  in  form,  modified  and  re- 
fined, and  made  to  conform  to  the  needs  of  investors, 
banks,  and  credit  institutions,  to  serve  agriculture,  and 
to  contribute  materially  to  the  welfare  of  our  farmers 
and  all  other  classes  of  our  citizens. 

The  bonds  and  debentures  of  the  European  land- 
credit  institutions  are  payable  at  no  fixed  time.  The 
holder  and  owner  of  a  mortgage  bond  or  debenture  can 
never  demand  its  payment.  The  institution  which 
issues  the  bond  or  debenture  may  recall  and  redeem  the 
bonds  at  its  pleasure.  The  bonds  and  debentures  are 
redeemed  by  issuing  institutions  in  the  same  ratio  that 
mortgages  are  paid.  This  is  obligatory  upon  land- 
credit  institutions.  The  outstanding  bonds  must  never 
exceed  the  amount  of  unpaid,  existing  mortgages.    The 


EUROPEAN  LAND-CREDITS  223 

bonds  or  debentures  to  be  retired  arc  determined  by 
some  system  of  drawing.  Bonds  and  debentures  must  be 
redeemed  at  par.  The  fact  that  there  is  no  fixed  time  for 
the  payment  of  the  bonds  and  debentures  at  first  would 
appear  to  be  a  serious  objection  thereto.  But  this,  how- 
ever, is  not  true.  These  bonds  and  debentures  are  highly 
liquid  securities.  They  are  generally  payable  to  bearer. 
They  are  transferable  by  mere  delivery.  They  are 
easily  negotiated  and  assigned.  They  may  be  used  as 
collateral  security  for  loans.  They  are  regarded  as 
gilt-edged  security.  Perhaps  more  than  any  other 
security  they  are  like  money  itself.  Indeed,  the  effort 
to  make  land  the  basis  for  money,  the  circulating 
medium  of  the  country,  appears  to  be  responsible  for 
the  invention  of  the  land  debenture.  The  owner  of  a 
mortgage  bond  or  debenture  is  not  concerned  as  to  the 
time  it  will  be  paid  by  the  issuing  institution.  He  may 
at  any  time  realize  cash  therefor.  Whenever  he  wishes 
to  change  the  form  of  his  investment,  he  can  do  so  with- 
out any  material  loss,  because  there  are  always  buyers 
for  these  securities. 

4.  Arnortkation  Payments.  All  the  land-credit  in- 
stitutions of  Europe,  for  long-time  loans,  require  the 
principal  to  be  paid  by  annual  or  semi-annual  pay- 
ments. Usually  the  payments  are  made  semi-annually. 
These  are  called  amortization  payments.  Amortiza- 
tion means  "the  extinction  or  reduction  of  a  debt 
through  a  sinking  fund."  To  amortize  a  debt  signifies 
to  destroy,  kill,  or  extinguish  it  by  means  of  a  sinking 
fund.  The  small  annual  payments  made  by  borrowers 
are  placed  in  a  sinking  fund.  A  sinking  fund  is  a  fund 
that  is  "instituted  and  invested  in  such  a  manner  that 


224  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

its  gradual  accumulations  will  enable  it  to  meet  and 
wipe  out  a  debt  at  its  maturity."  The  land-credit  in- 
stitutions issue  bonds  or  debentures  in  amounts  cor- 
responding to  the  aggregate  value  of  their  mortgages. 
These  bonds  or  debentures  on  their  face  are  the  debt  of 
the  institution  issuing  them.  Primarily  the  bonds  and 
debentures  are  the  debt  of  the  borrowers,  who  have 
executed  and  delivered  their  mortgages  to  land-credit 
corporations.  Interest  must  be  paid  on  these  bonds  and 
debentures.  Ultimately  the  principal  of  the  bonds 
must  be  paid.  Tho  mortgagors  must  pay  both  the  in- 
terest and  principal  and  in  addition  must  contribute  an 
additional  fund  to  meet  the  cost  of  operation,  or  ad- 
ministration charges,  including  whatever  profits  are 
made.  The  land-credit  institution,  whatever  be  its 
name  or  character,  acts  merely  as  the  agent  of  the  bor- 
rowers. It  is  merely  an  intermediary  between  borrow- 
ers and  investors.  Even  if  it  be  a  non-profit-sharing 
institution,  it  contributes  nothing  to  the  payment  of 
principal,  interest,  or  administration  charges.  But  to 
enable  the  borrowers  to  meet  the  obligations  they  owe 
the  credit  institutions,  and  to  make  it  possible  for  these 
institutions  to  extinguish  their  bonded  indebtedness, 
which  they  have  incurred  to  secure  funds  with  which  to 
make  loans  to  farmers,  a  sinking  fund  is  created,  to' 
which  every  borrower  contributes  a  certain  definite  and 
fixed  sum,  payable  annually  or  semi-annually.  These 
sinking-fund  payments  are  either  invested  for  the  use 
and  benefit  of  borrowers  or  are  used  in  redeeming  out- 
standing bonds  or  debentures.  The  use  of  amortization 
payments  to  extinguish  long-time  farm  loans  is  a 
feature  of  the  land-credit  systems   of  Europe  of  the 


EUROPEAN  LAND-CREDITS  225 

highest  importance.  The  long-time  loan,  the  mortgage- 
bond  or  debenture,  and  the  amortization  payments 
are  the  triple  combination  which  is  in  the  main 
responsible  for  the  success  of  all  existing  systems  of 
land-credit.  The  land-credit  systems  of  Europe  re- 
quire that  borrowers  shall  pay  at  least  one  half  of  one 
per  cent,  per  annum  upon  the  principal  of  their  debt. 
The  payment  of  this  amount  annually  will  liquidate  the 
debt  in  fifty-six  and  one  half  years.  The  advantages 
of  paying  a  debt  by  small  annual  payments  are  many. 
In  the  first  place  it  stimulates  thrift.  It  encourages 
systematic  saving.  It  is  the  only  method  by  which  the 
average  person  of  small  means  can  acquire  and  pay  for 
a  farm-home.  Only  institutions  authorized  to  make 
long-time  loans  and  issue  and  sell  long-time  bonds  or 
debentures  can  make  loans  payable  in  small  annual 
payments.  The  individual  money  lender  would  not 
care  to  accept  the  payment  of  the  principal  of  a  loan 
in  driblets.  Land-mortgage  institutions  may  accept 
small  payments,  because  the  funds  which  they  use  in 
making  loans  are  borrowed  from  investors  through  the 
sale  of  long-time  bonds  or  debentures.  Small  annual  or 
semi-annual  payments,  contributed  by  numerous  bor- 
rowers, pouring  into  a  common  treasury,  with  regular- 
ity, precision,  and  certainty,  create  a  fund  ample  to 
liquidate  at  maturity  the  bond  or  debenture  indebted- 
ness of  the  largest  land-credit  institution. 

5.  Absolute  Security  of  Bonds  and  Debentures. 
The  success  of  any  land-credit  system  depends  upon  the 
absolute  security  of  the  bonds  and  debentures  issued 
by  the  corporations  empowered  to  operate  the  business. 
The  bonds  and  debentures  run  for  long  years.     Gen- 


226  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

erally,  under  European  land-credit  systems,  there  Is  no 
fixed  time  for  their  maturity.  In  duration  they  live 
beyond  the  life  time  of  a  generation.  The  active  man- 
agers of  an  institution  at  the  time  a  series  of  bonds  is 
issued  may  not  live  to  see  them  all  paid.  The  sale  of 
bonds  and  debentures  is  the  source  through  which  the 
funds  come  to  provide  agriculture  with  its  credit.  The 
streams  of  credit  would  soon  cease  to  flow  into  the 
treasury  of  the  land-credit  institutions,  if  there  were 
the  least  doubt  about  the  absolute  safety  of  their  se- 
curities. Other  defects  in  a  land-credit  system  may  be 
overlooked.  This  or  that  may  distinguish  one  system 
from  another.  One  system  may  be  successful  in  one 
country ;  a  different  one  may  prosper  in  another  coun- 
try. One  may  be  better  or  worse  than  the  other.  None 
of  them  can  be  permanent  or  successful  unless  the  in- 
vesting public  has  perfect  confidence  in  the  securities 
offered  to  investors.  In  founding  land-credit  institu- 
tions, European  countries  have  exercised  the  highest 
diligence  to  insure  the  safety  of  mortgage  bonds  and 
debentures.  Every  reasonable  precaution  and  safe- 
guard has  been  utilized.  In  the  old  Landschaften  the 
principle  of  unlimited  liability  was  adopted.  In  later 
years,  some  of  the  Landschaften  have  abandoned  this 
idea.  Where  this  has  been  done,  other  safeguards  have 
been  substituted.  The  amount  of  a  loan  upon  a  farm  is 
limited  to  a  certain  percentage  of  the  appraised  value 
of  the  farm.  Appraisements  are  conservative.  Definite 
and  fixed  rules  are  applied  in  ascertaining  the  actual 
value  of  the  land  mortgaged.  The  loan  institutions 
carefully  inspect  property  during  the  lifetime  of  the 
loan.     Any  serious  deterioration  in  the  value  of  prop- 


EUROPEAN  LAND-CREDITS  227 

erty  makes  the  mortgage  subject  to  foreclosure.  Pro- 
vision is  made  to  remove  all  question  of  title  to  the 
mortgaged  property.  Many  of  the  loan  institutions 
have  special  privileges  in  the  steps  necessary  to  enforce 
pa3rment.  The  officers  of  the  Landschaften  of  Ger- 
many are  clothed  with  executive,  administrative,  and 
judicial  powers,  such  as  are  exercised  by  courts  and 
public  officials.  The  law  limits  and  restricts  the  busi- 
ness of  all  land-credit  institutions.  Officers  are  re- 
quired to  make  frequent  reports.  Governmental  in- 
spection is  authorized.  In  the  internal  administration 
of  these  institutions,  one  officer  acts  as  a  check  upon  an- 
other. Some  provision  is  made  in  all  institutions  for 
the  accumulation  of  reserves  and  guaranty  funds,  de- 
signed especially  to  meet  losses  through  non-payment  of 
interest  and  principal  of  any  loan.  All  of  which  are 
essential.  A  bond  or  debenture  of  doubtful  security 
cannot  be  sold.  This  is  not  all.  The  safety  of  the  bond 
or  debenture  affects  the  rate  of  interest  on  the  bond. 
The  safer  the  security,  the  lower  the  interest.  To  se- 
cure high  interest,  some  investors  may  purchase  a 
bond  or  debenture  of  questionable  security.  But  a  se- 
curity with  a  low  rate  of  interest  cannot  be  sold  in 
large  quantities  unless  it  is  regarded  as  absolutely  safe. 
In  establishing  land-credit  institutions  for  the  United 
States,  "safety  first"  would  be  an  excellent  motto.  In 
the  inauguration  of  a  new  land-credit  system  in  the 
United  States,  bonds  and  debentures  must  be  made  se- 
cure. The  farmer  possesses  the  land  which  in  itself  is 
absolute  security  for  the  money  which  will  be  loaned  to 
him.  That  security  must  not  be  vitiated,  impaired,  or 
deteriorated  by  the  corporation — whatever  may  be  its 


228  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

title  or  name — brought  into  existence  by  the  national 
government  to  collect  and  market  the  security  the 
farmer  presents.  The  farmer — not  the  land  bank — is 
most  deeply  and  vitally  interested  in  the  safety  of  the 
mortgage  bonds  issued.  It  has  been  demonstrated  by 
European  experience  that  the  principle  of  unlimited  lia- 
bility is  not  essential  to  the  safety  of  land  securities. 
For  many  reasons,  this  feature  would  be  objectionable 
to  American  farmers.  Being  unnecessary,  it  should  not 
be  adopted  in  this  country.  In  many  of  the  European 
countries,  the  provincial.  State  or  imperial  governments 
guarantee  the  payment  of  bonds  or  debentures  issued 
by  the  public  land-credit  institutions.  Such  guaranty 
has  not  been  extended  to  private,  joint-stock,  profit- 
sharing,  land-mortgage  institutions.  Without  discuss- 
ing here  the  question  of  government  aid,  the  Federal 
government,  in  assuming  the  responsibility  of  creating 
national  land-credit  institutions,  must,  above  all  things 
else,  see  to  it  that  the  bonds  or  debentures  issued  by 
these  institutions  shall  be  securities  about  the  safety  of 
which  there  can  be  and  will  be  no  question. 


XVIII 

REDUCING  THE  COST  OF  LIVING— 
A  COMMON  PROBLEM* 

Edwin  T.  Meredith 

There  is  an  idea,  fairly  widespread  and  deep  rooted, 
that  reducing  the  cost  of  living  is  essentially  an  agri- 
cultural problem.  Reducing  the  cost  of  living,  however, 
is  a  mutual  problem  and  if  satisfactory  results  are  se- 
cured business  men  must  also  give  their  attention  to  the 
problem.  Getting  food  delivered  at  the  kitchen  door  at 
the  right  price  does  not  depend  solely  on  how  much  of 
it  the  farmer  produces  or  what  price  the  farmer  gets  for 
it.  It  depends  much  on  the  expedition  and  economy 
with  which  it  is  handled  between  the  farmer's  wagon 
and  the  pantry.  It  is  a  problem  common  to  the  whole 
people,  and  it  cannot  be  solved  unless  business  and 
labor,  as  well  as  agriculture,  put  their  best  intelligence 
into  the  solution. 

The  consumer,  of  course,  pays  the  production  cost 
of  farm  products — except  when  the  farmer  sells  his 
products  for  less  than  it  costs  to  produce  them.  Pro- 
duction costs  are  high,  and  the  farmer  must  get  satis- 
factory prices,  or  he  will  have  to  go  out  of  business. 
If  he  goes  out  of  business,  both  he  and  the  city  man  will 
suflFer. 

*  From  The  Independent,  by  permission  of  the  author  and  the  publishers, 
the  Independent  Corporation. 

229 


230  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

Whom  the  Consumer  Supports 
When  the  farmer  has  been  paid  for  his  product,  the 
bill  that  the  consumer  must  pay  is  by  no  means  made 
out.  The  consumer  pays  the  freight  from  the  farm 
to  the  city  market.  He  pays  for  all  back  hauling  and 
round-about  hauling  that  result  in  so  much  delay  and 
so  much  loss  of  perishable  products.  He  pays  for 
terminal  facilities — and,  if  those  facilities  are  not  what 
they  should  be,  he  pays  a  penalty  because  of  inefficiency. 
He  pays  the  profits  of  the  commission  man,  of  the 
wholesale  merchant,  of  the  retail  grocer,  as  well  as  the 
wages  and  salaries  of  the  boy  who  drives  the  delivery 
wagon  and  of  everybody  who  has  anything  to  do  with 
the  product  from  the  time  it  leaves  the  farm  until  it 
reaches  the  kitchen.  Every  inefiicient  man  in  that  chain 
of  distribution,  every  man  who  draws  a  salary  or 
wages  for  work  not  needed,  every  man  who  does  not 
render  honest  service,  is  adding  a  burden  to  what  the 
consumer  must  pay  for  his  food. 

When  we  have  taken  the  lost  motion  out  of  distribu- 
tion and  properly  emphasized  production  in  the  fac- 
tory and  on  the  farm,  we  will  have  gone  a  far  way 
toward  reducing  the  price  that  the  ultimate  consumer 
pays  for  his  necessities.  The  farmer  and  the  agencies 
that  operate  for  and  with  the  farmer,  of  course,  are 
powerless  to  do  that  alone.  It  can  only  be  done  with 
the  help  of  business  men  and  laboring  men  everywhere. 

Arithmetic   of  System  Needs  Revision 
Distribution,  of  course,  is  just  as  essential  as  pro- 
duction, but,  if  out  of  every  ten  men,  we  have  six  en- 
gaged  in    distribution    and   only    four   in    production, 


REDUCING  THE  COST  OF  LIVING      231 

there  can  be  consumed  by  each  of  the  ten  men  only  four 
tenths  of  what,  one  man  can  produce.  If  six  of  the  ten 
are  engaged  in  production  and  only  four  in  distribu- 
tion, each  man  can  have  for  his  own  use  six  tenths 
instead  of  four  tenths  of  what  one  man  can  produce. 
The  principle  applies  to  the  110,000,000  people  in  the 
United  States  in  exactly  the  same  way  that  it  would 
apply  to  ten  men  marooned  on  an  island.  We  cannot 
consume  more  than  we  produce,  and  the  quantity  pro- 
duced by  the  whole  tends  to  decrease  with  the  increase 
in  the  number  of  men  unnecessarily  engaged  in  the  dis- 
tribution of  the  products. 

I  am  not  prepared  to  say  that  any  given  number  of 
men  should  give  up  merchandizing  or  the  place  they 
may  now  occupy  in  distribution  and  become  factory 
laborers  or  miners  or  farmers,  but  I  am  prepared  to  say 
that,  in  justice  to  himself  and  to  his  country,  every 
person  ought  to  see  to  it  that  there  are  no  drones  in 
his  own  hive  to  add  to  the  cost  of  distributing  what  the 
farmer  and  factory  produce,  and  that  every  so-called 
laborer  should  see  that  he  contributes  just  as  largely 
as  possible  to  the  sum  total  of  production,  no  matter 
what  article  he  is  making  or  what  duty  he  may  be  en- 
gaged upon. 

The  farmer,  of  course,  must  produce — and  of  course 
he  will  produce.  He  gets  paid  only  for  what  he  pro- 
duces. But  there  is  one  thing  which  will  take  him  out 
of  production  and  that  is  to  be  obliged  to  sell  the  prod- 
uct of  his  year's  labor  and  investment  for  a  price 
which  does  not  enable  him  and  his  family  to  live  as  well 
as  his  friends  in  the  city  who  devote  their  money  and 
energies  in  other  directions. 


232  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

"Take  Up  the  Slack,"  Says  the  Farmer 
The  farmers  ask,  naturally  enough,  that  the  high 
cost  of  living  be  approached  by  all  the  people  as  a 
common  problem.  They  ask  that  those  engaged  in  dis- 
tribution "take  up  the  slack,"  eliminate  the  lost  motion, 
and  refrain  from  putting  so  great  a  burden  on  produc- 
tion. They  ask  that  the  banks,  the  railroads,  wholesale 
houses,  retail  establishments  and  factories — all  of 
which  they  recognize  as  vital  necessities — be  put  on  the 
highest  plane  of  efficiency.  They  look  to  the  factory 
executive  to  speed  up  his  operations  so  that  two  days' 
labor  instead  of  three,  if  possible,  will  go  into  a  given 
article  which  he  finds  necessary  to  his  comfort  or  the 
conduct  of  his  farming  operations.  Without  taking 
anything  from  the  manufacturer's  profit,  the  farmer's 
margin  is  increased  because  of  the  fact  that  his  equip- 
ment and  supplies  are  thereby  reduced  in  cost,  his  pro- 
duction is  stimulated,  and  he  is  encouraged  to  stay  on 
the  farm.     The  farmer  asks  these  things  of  business. 

The  farmer  asks  also  that  the  laborers  in  the  mine, 
the  factory,  and  the  mill  make  an  effort  comparable  to 
his  to  see  that  there  is  just  as  little  labor  expense  as 
possible  in  each  article  turned  out  by  their  hands. 

If  labor  in  every  line  produces  all  it  can  produce,  if 
manufacturers,  jobbers,  and  dealers  recognize  the  harm 
that  must  ultimately  come  from  profiteering  upon  the 
farmer  and  content  themselves  with  a  reasonable  profit, 
an  important  contribution  will  have  been  made  to  the 
solution  of  the  problem  of  reducing  the  cost  of  living, 
to  the  good  of  all  concerned.  On  the  other  hand,  if 
these  things  are  not  done,  if  farming  be  not  as  re- 
munerative, pleasant,  and  attractive  as  other  lines  of 


REDUCING  THE  COST  OF  LIVING      233 

endeavor,  conditions  will  not  improve.  More  and  more 
will  the  young  men  leave  the  farms.  More  and  more 
will  the  older  men  become  discouraged.  Less  and  less 
will  there  be  of  farm  produce  to  divide  among  the  whole 
people  for  their  sustenance  and  higher  and  higher  will 
go  the  price  of  that  which  is  produced. 

Problem  for  Business  Men 
I  hope  I  have  made  it  clear  that,  in  my  opinion,  the 
business  men  of  America  must  recognize  the  problems 
of  the  farmer  as  their  problems  also.  They  must  have 
a  real  understanding  of  the  farmer's  place  in  our  na- 
tional economy  and  they  must  help  to  provide  and 
maintain  facilities  which  will  aid  him  in  his  business. 
The  Federal  Farm  Loan  Bank,  for  instance,  is  of  great 
advantage  to  the  farmers  of  America,  making  money 
available  to  them  on  favorable  terms,  without  com- 
missions, without  renewal  charges,  giving  them  long 
time  that  they  may  plan  ahead  where  necessary,  and 
financing  them  to  carry  on  the  fundamental  activity  of 
the  country ;  and  yet  an  assault  is  being  made  upon  this 
system.  The  success  of  the  opponents  of  the  Federal 
Farm  Loan  Banks  would  be  a  blow  to  agriculture  in 
America  and  would  ultimately  result  in  harm  to  all. 
The  business  men  must  interest  themselves  in  retaining 
for  the  farmer  this  aid  and  help  in  securing  others. 

On  the  production  side  the  farmer  has  aiding  him  all 
the  accumulated  knowledge  of  the  United  States  De- 
partment of  Agriculture,  the  agricultural  colleges  of 
the  several  states,  and  the  experiment  stations.  The 
extension  machinery  of  these  institutions,  functioning 
through  the  county  agricultural  agents  and  the  home 


234  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

demonstration  agents  in  a  great  majority  of  the  agri- 
cultural counties  of  the  country,  makes  the  information 
immediately  available  and  directly  applicable  to  the  in- 
dividual farmer.  The  county  agents  and  home  demon- 
stration agents,  while  not  neglecting  production  and 
utilization,  are  giving  more  and  more  attention  to  the 
economic  end  of  the  farm  business,  and  more  attention 
to  buying  and  selling  in  cooperation  with  the  Bureau  of 
Markets  and  the  Office  of  Farm  Management  in  the  De- 
partment of  Agriculture. 

Selling  the  Second  Blade 
It  is  desirable  to  make  two  blades  of  grass  grow 
where  but  one  grew  before,  but  to  encourage  this  you 
must  have  a  market  where  you  can  sell  the  second  blade 
at  a  profit.  The  farmers  of  the  United  States  have 
been  able  to  increase  the  number  of  blades  and  they  are 
beginning  to  do  something  on  their  own  account  toward 
getting  the  extra  blades  to  a  profitable  market.  The 
farmer  would  prefer  to  devote  his  entire  time  to  pro- 
duction. He  has  learned,  however,  that  he  is  not  made 
prosperous  simply  by  what  he  produces  but  by  what  he 
can  dispose  of  at  a  fair  price,  and  he  is  giving  more 
thought  to  the  distribution  end  of  his  business  than 
ever  before,  notwithstanding,  as  I  say,  that  he  would 
no  doubt  prefer  to  devote  his  whole  time  and  thought 
to  production. 

I  speak  of  these  things  by  way  of  conveying  to  the 
business  man  this  assurance:  The  farmer  is  not  with- 
out the  inclination  or  the  necessary  aids  to  do  his  part 
in  reducing  the  cost  of  living.  He  is  anxious  to  do  his 
share  and  more,  and  he  seeks  the  cooperation,  the  sup- 


REDUCING  THE  COST  OF  LIVING      235 

port,  and  good-will  of  the  business  world.  All  those 
who  work  together  in  strengthening  agriculture  and 
making  it  attractive,  and  this  necessitates  making  it 
profitable,  will  aid  in  strengthening  and  making 
permanent  the  very  foundation  of  our  whole  economic 
structure  and  will  render  a  real  service  to  the  Nation 
as  a  whole. 


XIX 

AGRICULTURAL  READJUSTMENT  AND  THE 
HIGH  COST  OF  LIVING  * 

Herbert  Hoover 

The  high  cost  of  living  is  a  temporary  economic 
problem,  surrounded  by  high  emotions.  The  agricul- 
tural industry  is  a  permanent  economic  problem,  sur- 
rounded by  many  dangers.  We  are  now  entering  into 
our  regular  four-year  period  of  large  promises  to  suf- 
ferers of  all  kinds.  Except  to  demagogues  and  to  the 
fellows  who  farm  the  farmer,  there  are  no  easy 
formulas;  nevertheless,  there  are  constructive  forces 
that  can  be  put  in  motion — and  these  are  good  times  to 
get  them  talked  about. 

As  bearing  upon  some  suggestion  of  constructive 
solution,  I  wish  to  establish  and  analyze  certain 
propositions.  Amongst  other  things  they  involve  a 
clear  understanding  of  the  bearings  of  different  seg- 
ments of  the  total  price  of  food  between  the  different 
links  in  the  chain  of  production  and  distribution: 

First:  That  the  high  cost  of  living  is  due  largely 
to  inflation  and  shortage  in  world  pi^oduction ;  specula- 
tion is  an  incident  of  these  forces,  not  the  cause. 

Second:  That  the  farmer's  prices  are  fixed  by  the 
impact  of  world  wholesale  prices ;  that  such  prices  bear 
only  a  remote  relation  to  his  costs  of  production. 

*  Reprinted  from  the  Saturday  Evening  Post.  Copyright,  1920,  by  the 
Curtis  Publishing  Company.    By  permission  of  the  author  and  the  publishers. 

236 


AGRICULTURAL  READJUSTMENT      237 

Third:  That  any  increase  or  decrease  in  the  cost 
of  placing  the  farmer's  products  in  the  hands  of  the 
wholesaler  is  a  deduction  from  or  addition  to  the  farm- 
er's prices ;  that  is,  an  expansion  or  contraction  of  the 
margin  between  the  farm  and  wholesale  prices  makes  an 
increase  or  decrease  in  the  farmer's  return. 

Fourth:  That  increase  or  decrease  in  the  cost  of 
distributing  food  from  the  wholesaler  to  the  door  of  the 
ultimate  consumer  is  an  addition  or  deduction  pre- 
dominantly to  the  consumer's  cost ;  that  is,  the  margin 
between  the  wholesaler  and  consumer  in  its  increases  or 
decreases  is  largely  an  addition  to  or  subtraction  from 
the  consumer's  price. 

Fifth:  That  these  two  margins  in  most  of  our  com- 
modities except  grain  were,  before  the  war,  the  largest 
in  the  world;  that  they  have  grown  abnormally  during 
the  war,  except  during  the  year  of  food  control. 

Sixth:  That  analysis  of  the  character  of  the  margin 
between  the  farmer  and  wholesaler  will  show  that  de- 
creases in  price  find  immediate  reflection  on  the  farmer, 
while  immediate  increases  in  price  are  absorbed  by  the 
trades  between,  and  the  farmer  gets  but  a  lagging 
increase. 

Seventh:  That  an  analysis  of  these  margins  will 
show  that  they  can  be  constructively  diminished,  but 
that,  regrettable  as  it  is,  the  prosecution  of  profiteers 
will  not  do  it. 

Eighth:  That  the  problem  must  be  solved,  if  our 
agriculture  is  to  be  maintained  and  if  the  balance  be- 
tween agriculture  and  general  industry  is  to  be  pre- 
served so  as  to  prevent  our  becoming  dependent  upon 


238  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

imports  for  food,  with  a  train  of  industrial  and  national 
dangers. 

That  short  world  production  has  been  one  of  the 
causes  of  rising  prices  cannot  be  denied.  The  warring 
powers  of  Europe  took  sixty  million  men  from  produc- 
tion— nearly  one  third  their  productive  man  power — 
and  put  it  to  destruction.  They  have  lived  to  a  great 
degree  by  drain  of  commodities  from  the  United  States 
and  thus  brought  their  shortage  to  our  shores.  They 
have  not  yet  altogether  recovered  from  the  holidays  of 
victory,  the  gloom  of  defeat,  the  persuasive  "isms"  that 
would  find  production  without  work,  the  destruction  of 
their  economic  unity,  transportation,  credits,  and  other 
fundamentals  necessary  to  maintain  production.  It 
will  be  some  time  before  they  do  recover.  In  the  mean- 
time, they  are  perforce  reducing  their  consumption — 
their  standard  of  living — ^because  they  have  largely  ex- 
hausted their  securities,  commodities,  or  credit  to  con- 
tinue the  borrowing  of  our  commodities  for  their  own 
short  production,  as  during  the  war.  The  exchange 
barometer  is  to-day  witness  of  the  end  of  this  procedure 
of  living  on  borrowed  money.  In  passing,  it  may  be 
mentioned  that  exchange  is  no  more  a  cause  of  their 
inability  to  buy  from  us  than  is  the  barometer  the 
cause  of  blizzards.  The  storm  is  that  they  have  mostly 
exhausted  their  credits  and  they  have  not  recovered 
production  so  as  to  offer  commodities  to  us  in  exchange 
for  ours. 

Our  own  industrial  production,  as  distinguished  from 
agricultural  production,  has  fallen  rapidly  since  the 
armistice.  Some  of  the  fall  is  due  to  war  weariness, 
some  to   "isms"   that  have   infected  us   from  Europe, 


AGRICULTURAL  READJUSTMENT   239 

some  to  the  natural  abandonment  of  high-cost  pro- 
duction brought  into  play  during  the  war,  some  to 
strikes,  and  a  host  of  other  wastes.  Our  consumption 
has  greatly  increased  after  the  restraint  of  war.  De- 
creases had  not  penetrated  our  agricultural  community 
up  to  the  1919  harvest,  nor  will  such  decrease  arise 
from  these  causes,  but,  as  I  will  set  out  later,  forces  are 
entering  that  will  decrease  our  agricultural  produc- 
tion. 

Our  production  in  nearly  all  important  food  com- 
modities except  sugar  is  in  surplus  of  our  own  need.  It 
only  becomes  a  shortage  affecting  prices  under  the 
drain  of  exports.  Therefore  it  is  the  world  shortage 
that  is  affecting  our  price  levels,  not,  so  far,  a  de- 
ficiency for  our  own  needs. 

So  far  as  relief  from  price  influence  by  shortage  in 
production  is  concerned,  it  may  arise  in  two  ways: 
First,  slowly  through  gradual  recuperation  in  world 
production.  Second,  by  compulsory  reduction  of  con- 
sumption in  Europe  through  their  inability  to  pay  us 
by  commodities,  gold,  or  credits.  This  latter  has  been 
very  evident  through  the  drop  in  exchange  and  en- 
gagements for  exports  during  the  past  few  weeks. 

The  cost  of  food  to  the  consumer  is  divided  among 
the  farmers  on  one  hand  and  storage,  manufacture, 
jobbers,  wholesalers,  retailers,  and  transportation  on 
the  other.  I  believe  these  charges  between  the  farmer 
and  consumer  fall  into  two  distinct  groups:  The 
charges  comprising  the  margin  between  the  farmer 
and  wholesaler,  which  mainly  concern  the  farmer ;  and 
the  charges  between  the  wholesaler  and  consumer,  which 
mainly  concern  the  consumer.     To  establish  this  di- 


240  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

vision,  it  is  necessary  to  analyze  shortly  the  datum 
point  by  which  price  is  determined. 

The  diet  of  the  American  people  from  a  nutritional 
— not  financial — standpoint  comprises  the  following 
articles  and  proportions : 

Wheat   and   rye 29^ 

Pork  products    15-7 

Dairy  products 15.3 

Beef  products 5.3 

Corn  products 7.0 

Sugar  products 13.2 

Vegetable  oils 3.6 

89.6 
All  others,  including  potatoes 10.4 

100.0 

The  wholesale  price  of  about  ninety  per  cent,  of  our 
food  in  normal  times  is  only  remotely  determined  by 
the  cost  of  production,  but  mostly  by  world  condi- 
tions. 

We  export  a  surplus  of  most  commodities  among  the 
ninety  per  cent.,  and  the  prices  of  exports  are  de- 
termined by  competition  with  other  world  supplies  in 
the  European  wholesale  markets.  Those  items  in  this 
ninety  per  cent,  that  we  do  not  export  are  influenced 
by  the  same  forces,  because  in  normal  times  we  import 
them  on  any  considerable  variation  in  price  and  the 
wholesaler  naturally  buys  in  the  cheapest  market.  Even 
milk  is  to  a  considerable  degree  controlled  by  butter 
imports  in  normal  times.  When  we  import  butter  it  re- 
leases more  milk  to  competition.  This  cannot  be  said 
to  such  extent  of  the  most  of  the  odd  ten  per  cent.,  be- 
cause they  are  largely  perishables  that  do  not  stand 
overseas  transport,  and  consequently  rise  and  fall  more 
nearly  directly  upon  local  supply  and  demand. 


AGRICULTURAL  READJUSTMENT   241 

Some  economists  will  at  once  argue  that  if  prices 
are  unprofitable  to  the  farmer  the  situation  will  correct 
itself  by  diminished  production  and,  consequently,  a 
general  rise  in  the  world  level  of  prices.  In  the  abstract 
this  is  true,  but  as  a  matter  of  fact  the  surplus  which 
our  farmers  contribute  for  export  is  only  a  small  por- 
tion of  their  total  production  or  of  the  world  pool,  yet 
the  total  of  the  world  pool  operating  through  this  minor 
segment  makes  the  prices  for  a  large  part  of  their  com- 
modities. Therefore,  the  effect  in  normal  times  of  re- 
striction in  production  in  any  one  country  does  not 
affect  price  so  much  as  theoretic  argument  would  be- 
lieve. 

The  farmer  must  plant  if  he  would  live,  and  he  must 
plant  long  in  advance  of  his  knowledge  of  prices  or 
world  production.  He  can  make  no  contracts  in  ad- 
vance of  his  planting,  nor  can  he  cease  operations  on 
the  day  prices  fall  too  low.  He  is  driven  on,  year  after 
3'ear,  in  hope  and  necessity,  and  Avill  continue  over  long 
periods  with  a  standard  return  below  rightful  living  be- 
cause he  has  no  other  course — and  always  has  hopes. 
He  will  vary  fairly  rapidly  from  one  commodity  to  an- 
other— from  wheat  to  other  grains,  for  instance — but 
he  mostly  raises  his  maximum  of  something.  In  the 
long  run  of  decreasing  prices  he  would  undoubtedly 
reach  so  low  a  standard  as  to  cease  production.  Then 
comes  a  comparatively  short  period  of  higher  prices  in 
some  commodity;  production  is  again  stimulated  and 
followed  by  long  intervals  of  low  standards.  As  shown 
by  the  following  table,  on  the  whole,  the  farmer  has  not 
been  underpaid  during  the  war,  but  the  currents  again 
are  turmng  against  him : 


242  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 


Department 

INDEX 

OP  PRICES  AT  THE  FARM  IN 

of  Labor 

PRINCIPAL  PRODUCE  STATES 

wholesale 

All 

index  of  all 

farm 

commodities 

produce 

Hogs 

Corn         Wheat     Cotton 

Prewar   

100 

100 

100 

100           100           100 

First  quarter 

1918.. 187 

200 

213 

224          254          24() 

Last  quarter 

1918.. 206 

204. 

223 

220           258           246 

First  quarter 

1919.. 200 

202 

225 

228          264          215 

Last  quarter 

1919.. 230 

206 

178 

216           277          268 

It  will  be  seen  that  the  farmer  enjoyed  prices 
equivalent  to  and  higher  than  the  general  level  up  to 
the  last  six  months.  He  is  now,  however,  falling  be- 
hind in  some  important  products.  Unlike  the  indus- 
trial workers,  he  is  unable  to  demand  an  adjustment  of 
his  income  to  the  changed  index  of  living. 

For  the  moment,  what  I  wish  only  to  establish  is  that 
the  farmer's  prices  are  not  based  upon  any  conception 
of  costs  of  production,  but  upon  forces  in  which  he 
has  no  voice.  He  can  never  organize  to  put  his  indus- 
try on  a  "cost  plus"  basis  as  industrial  producers  do, 
and  a  remedy  must  be  found  elsewhere. 

As  stated,  the  margin  between  the  farmer  and  con- 
sumer falls  into  two  divisions — one  of  which  predomi- 
nantly affects  the  farmer  and  the  other  the  consumer. 
It  is  really  the  wholesale  prices  that  govern  the  farmer, 
rather  than  retail  prices,  for  it  is  in  wholesale  prices 
that  the  farmer  competes  with  the  world.  As  the  prices 
paid  by  the  wholesaler  are  mostly  fixed  by  overseas 
trade  at  the  datum  point  on  the  Atlantic  seaboard  or 
in  Europe,  then  if  the  margins  between  the  wholesaler 
and  the  farmer  are  unduly  large,  or  increase,  it  is 
mostly  to  the  farmer's  detriment.  For  instance,  as  the 
price  of  his  wheat  in  normal  times  is  made  in  Liverpool, 
any  increase  in  handling  comes  out  of  the  farmer's 
price.     Likewise,  as  the  wholesale  butter  price  is  made 


AGRICULTURAL  READJUSTMENT      243 

by  the  import  of  Danish  butter  into  New  York,  any  in- 
crease in  the  numbers  or  charges  between  our  farmer 
and  the  wholesale  buyer  comes  to  a  considerable  de- 
gree out  of  the  farmer. 

As  the  datum  point  of  determining  prices  is  at  the 
wholesaler,  the  accretion  by  the  charges  for  distribu- 
tion from  that  point  forward  to  the  consumer's  door 
will  not  affect  the  farmer,  but  does  affect  the  consumer. 
When  competition  decreases  through  shortage  the  con- 
sumer pays  the  added  profits  of  these  trades. 

Studies  of  the  cost  of  our  distribution  system,  made 
by  the  Food  Administration  during  the  war,  established 
two  prime  conditions.  The  first  is  that  the  margins 
between  our  farmers  and  the  wholesaler  in  commodities 
— other  than  grain  in  some  instances — are,  even  in 
normal  times,  the  highest  in  any  civilized  state — fully 
twenty-five  per  cent,  higher  than  in  most  European 
countries.  The  expensiveness  of  our  chain  of  distribu- 
tion in  most  commodities  in  normal  times,  as  compared 
with  Continental  countries,  is  due  partly  to  the  wide 
distances  of  the  producing  areas  from  the  dominating 
consuming  areas,  but  there  are  other  contributing 
forces  that  can  be  remedied. 

In  Europe  the  great  public  markets  in  the  cities 
bring  farmer  and  consumer  closely  together  in  man}'^ 
commodities,  but  in  the  United  States  the  bulk  of  prod- 
ucts are  too  far  afield  for  this.  The  farmer  must  mar- 
ket through  a  long  chain  of  manufacturers,  brokers, 
jobbers,  and  wholesalers  with  or  without  their  own  dis- 
tribution system,  who  must  establish  a  clientele  of  direct 
retailers ;  and  thus  public  markets,  except  in  special 
locations  and  in  comparatively  few  commodities,  have 


244.  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

not  been  successful.  Another  major  factor  in  our  costs 
of  distribution  is  the  increasing  demand  for  expensive 
service  b}^  our  consumers.  There  are  many  other  fac- 
tors that  bear  on  the  problem  and  the  economic  results 
of  our  system  which  are  discussed,  together  with  some 
suggestions  of  remedy,  later  on. 

The  second  result  of  these  studies  was  to  show  the 
great  widening  of  this  margin  during  the  war.  During 
the  year  of  the  Food  Administration  in  active  restraint 
on  this  margin  there  was  an  advance  of  six  points  in  the 
wholesale  index  while  the  farmer's  index  moved  up 
twenty-five  points.  Both  before  and  after  that  period 
the  two  indexes  moved  up  together.  The  same  can  be 
said  of  the  margins  between  the  wholesaler  and  the  con- 
sumer. Taking  the  period  of  the  war  as  a  whole,  the 
margin  between  the  farmer  and  consumer  has  widened 
out  to  an  extravagant  degree. 

A  good  instance  of  a  movement  in  margins  is  shown 
in  flour  in  1917.  The  farmer's  average  return  for 
wheat  of  the  1916  harvest,  as  shown  by  the  Department 
of  Agriculture,  was  about  $1.42.  As  about  four  and 
one  half  bushels  of  wheat  are  required  to  make  a  barrel 
of  flour,  the  farmer's  share  of  the  receipts  from  this 
harvest  was  about  $6.40  per  barrel.  In  1917,  before 
the  Food  Administration  came  into  being,  flour  rose  to 
$17.50  per  barrel  to  the  consumer,  or,  at  that  time, 
a  margin  of  eleven  dollars  per  barrel.  During  the  ad- 
ministration the  farmer  received  an  average  of  about 
two  dollars  for  wheat  at  the  farm,  or  about  nine  dollars 
out  of  a  barrel  of  flour.  The  consumer  paid  $12.50, 
the  margin  being  about  $3.50  per  barrel.  This  in- 
crease in  margins  shows  vividly  in  the  higher  priced 


1919 

1920 

$16.27 

$15.37 

37.33 

37.71 

21.06 

22.34 

AGRICULTURAL  READJUSTMENT   245 

foods  ;  for  instance,  pork  products.  If  we  talce  hogs  at 
the  railway  station  over  the  great  hog  states  con- 
tiguous to  Chicago  as  a  basis,  we  find : 

SIX  MONTHS 
1914 
Price  of  hogs  in  principal  states 

per  100  pounds $7,45 

Price  of  cured  products  to  con- 
sumer from  100  pounds  hogs  18.97 
Margin     between     farmer     and 
consumer   11.52 

Thus,  while  the  farmer  has  gained  about  $7.92  in  his 
price,  the  margin  has  increased  by  $10.82  to  the  con- 
sumer, and  incidentally,  during  the  last  year  since 
food-control  restraints  were  removed,  the  consumer  has 
paid  thirty  cents  more  while  the  farmer  got  ninety 
cents  less.    These  instances  could  be  greatly  multiplied. 

It  is  unfortunate  that  our  national  statistics  do  not 
permit  a  complete  analysis  of  the  distribution  of  margin 
between  all  the  various  groups  in  the  chain  between  the 
farmer  and  consumer  in  different  commodities.  It 
would  be  helpful  if  we  could  take  the  farmers,  railways, 
manufacturers,  wholesalers,  and  retailers,  and  de- 
termine what  proportion  each  receives. 

These  margins  between  farmer  and  consumer  are 
made  up  of  a  necessary  chain  of  charges  for  transport, 
storage,  manufacture,  and  distribution.  The  great 
majority  of  citizens  Avho  are  engaged  in  the  processes 
that  go  to  make  up  this  portion  of  Tood  costs  are  em- 
ployed in  an  obviously  essential  economic  function  and 
they  do  not  approach  it  in  a  spirit  of  criminality,  but 
as  a  very  necessary,  proper,  and  honorable  function. 
They  have,  since  the  European  war  began,  rather  over- 
enjoyed  the  result  of  economic  forces  that  were  not  of 


246  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

their  own  creation.  That  a  considerable  margin  is 
necessary  to  cover  the  legitimate  costs  of  and  profits  on 
distribution  is  obvious.  The  only  direction  of  inquiry  is 
how  they  can  be  legitimately  minimized. 

These  margins,  starting  from  the  unduly  high  ex- 
pense of  a  faulty  system,  have  increased  not  only 
legitimately,  due  to  increased  transportation,  labor, 
rent,  taxes,  and  increased  interest  upon  the  large  capi- 
tal required;  but  they  have,  except  during  the  period 
of  control,  increased  unduly  beyond  these  necessities. 
There  are  two  general  characteristics  of  this  margin 
that  are  of  some  interest.  In  the  first  instance,  all  of 
the  transport,  storage,  manufacture,  and  handling  is 
conducted  upon  a  basis  of  cost  plus  either  fixed  returns 
or,  as  is  more  usually  the  case,  a  percentage  of  profit 
upon  the  whole  cost  of  operation.  Any  distributing 
agency  ceases  to  operate  when  it  does  not  secure  costs 
and  a  profit.  Consequently,  all  these  links  put  up  a 
resistance  to  a  curtailment  of  the  margin  which  the 
farmer  is  unable,  except  by  absolute  exhaustion,  to  do 
against  reduction  of  his  price  levels.  If  rapid  falls  in 
food  prices  occur,  the  farmer,  at  least  in  the  first  in- 
stance, has  to  stand  most  of  the  fall  because  he  can- 
not quit. 

The  farmer's  costs  of  production  relate  to  a  period 
long  prior  to  the  fall.  Thus,  if  wages  are  due  to  fall  as 
a  result  of  a  fall  in  food  prices  the  farmer  Is  always 
selling  on  the  old  basis  of  his  costs.  The  farmer  has 
but  one  turnover  in  the  year.  The  middleman  has 
several,  and  can  thus  adjust  himself  quickly. 

Second,  the  custom  of  many  of  these  businesses  is  to 
operate  upon  a  percentage  of  profit  on  the  value  of  the 


AGRICULTURAL  READJUSTMENT      247 

cammodities  handled,  even  after  deducting  all  their 
increased  costs,  interest,  or  other  charges.  When  we 
have  rising  prices,  therefore,  a  doubling  of  prices,  for 
instance,  tends  to  double  profits  on  the  same  volume  of 
commodities  handled.  In  a  rising  market  competitive 
pressures  are  much  diminished  and  the  dealer  can  as- 
sess his  own  profits  to  greater  degree  than  usual.  While 
the  packers  make  a  profit  of,  say,  two  cents  on  the 
dollar  value  of  commodities,  it  represents  double  the 
profit  per  pound  over  pre-war,  even  after  allowing  such 
items  as  interest  on  the  larger  capital  involved. 

Aside  from  the  necessary  rise  in  the  margin  that  has 
grown  out  of  the  rise  in  cost  of  labor,  rent,  and  so 
on,  from  inflation  and  world  shortage,  there  are  some 
causes  which  have  accumulated  to  increase  the  margins 
between  the  farmer  and  the  wholesaler  and  the  whole- 
saler and  the  consumer  that  could  be  greatly  mitigated. 
During  the  war,  in  order  to  restrain  wild  greed  and 
profiteering  in  the  then  existing  unlimited  demand, 
margins  between  purchase  and  sale  in  the  different 
manufacturing  and  handling  trades  were  fixed  in  all  the 
great  commodities — iron,  steel,  cement,  lumber,  coal, 
and  foodstuffs.  The  first  task  of  the  war  was  to  secure 
production,  and  the  margins  were  therefore  fixed  at 
such  breadth  as  would  allow  the  smaller  high-cost  manu- 
facturer and  the  smaller  dealer  to  live.  Otherwise  the 
smaller  competitors  would  have  been  extinguished,  pro- 
duction would  have  been  lost,  and,  worse  yet,  the  larger 
low-cost  operator  would  have  been  left  with  much  in- 
flated monopoly.  The  excess-profits  tax  was  levied  as 
a  sequent  corrective  to  this  necessary  first  step,  so  as 
to  take  the  undue  profits  of  the  large  producer  back  to 


248  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

the  public.  It  was  a  wise  war  measure,  but  the  moment 
restraints  on  profits  were  taken  off  and  there  was  a  free 
and  rising  market  ahead,  the  tax  was  added  to  prices 
by  all  the  participants  and  passed  on  to  the  consumer, 
or  deducted  from  the  farmer  when  world  levels  crowded 
his  prices  down.  It  should  have  been  repealed  at  the 
time  the  controls  were  abandoned,  but  our  legislatures 
have  been  busy  with  other  things,  and  in  the  meanwhile 
in  food  it  not  only  increases  the  margin  between  the 
farmer  and  the  consumer  but  tends,  as  stated  above,  to 
come  out  of  the  farmer  to  a  large  degree.  It  has  other 
vicious  results  in  that  it  stimulates  dealers  and  manu- 
facturers to  speculate  their  profits  away  in  unsound 
business,  rather  than  to  pay  them  to  the  Government. 
It  does  sound  well  to  tax  the  great  manufacturers,  but 
to  make  them  the  agency  to  collect  taxes  from  the 
population  is  not  altogether  sound  government. 

It  is  a  very  important  tax  to  the  Government,  bring- 
ing as  it  does  over  a  billion  a  year,  and  a  place  to  put 
this  load  is  not  to  be  found  easily. 

The  income  tax  does  not  have  so  malign  an  effect,  for 
it  comes  to  a  great  extent  from  the  individual  and  not 
from  business.  The  present  method  of  income  tax, 
however,  has  some  weaknesses.  The  same  levy  is  made 
upon  earned  incomes  as  upon  those  that  are  unearned. 
The  tax  on  earned  incomes  tends  in  certain  cases  to  be 
passed  on  to  the  consumer  or  deducted  from  the  farmer, 
and,  besides,  it  is  not  just  that  a  family  living  by  giv- 
ing productive  service  to  the  community  should  pay  the 
same  as  a  family  that  contributes  nothing  by  way  of 
effort.  A  stiff  tax  on  these  latter  might  send  them  to 
work,   and   certainly  induce  economy.      Moreover,   the 


AGRICULTURAL  READJUSTMENT      249 

earner  of  income  must  provide  for  old  age  and  depen- 
dents while  the  unearned-income  taxpayer  has  this 
already.  Altogether,  it  would  seem  the  part  of  wisdom 
at  least  to  increase  the  income  tax  on  the  larger  un- 
earned income  and  decrease  it  on  the  earners.  It  is 
argued  that  this  drives  great  incomes  to  evasion  by 
investment  in  tax-free  securities,  which  is  probably 
true.  We  need  more  comparative  figures  than  the 
Treasury  statistics  yet  show  to  answer  this  point.  In 
any  event,  relief  to  the  earner  would  free  his  savings 
to  invest  in  taxable  securities,  and  we  need  of  all  things 
to  stimulate  the  initiative  of  the  saver.  Income  taxes, 
except  when  too  high  on  earned  incomes,  do  not  destroy 
initiative,  and  every  other  government  has,  in  taxing, 
recognized  the  essential  difference  between  earned  and 
unearned  incomes.  This  distinction  would  generally 
relieve  the  range  of  smaller  incomes,  for  they  are  mostly 
earned. 

The  inheritance-tax  field  has  not  been  fuUy  exploited 
as  yet.  It  cannot  be  deducted  from  either  farmer  or 
consumer,  it  does  not  affect  the  cost  of  living,  it  does 
not  destroy  initiative  in  the  individual  if  it  leaves  large 
and  proper  residues  for  dependents.  It  does  redis- 
tribute overswollen  fortunes.  It  does  make  for  equality 
of  opportunity  by  freeing  from  the  dead  hand  control 
of  our  tools  of  production.  It  reduces  extravagance 
in  the  next  generation  and  sends  them  to  constructive 
service.  It  has  a  theoretic  economic  objection  of  being 
a  dispersal  of  capital  into  income  at  the  hands  of  the 
Government,  but  so  long  as  the  Government  spends  an 
equal  amount  on  redemption  of  the  debt  or  productive 
works  even  this  argument  no  longer  stands. 


250  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

We  may  need  to  come  to  some  sort  of  increased  con- 
sumption taxes  in  order  to  lift  that  part  of  excess 
profits  and  tax  on  earned  income  that  cannot  be  very 
properly  placed  elsewhere.  When  it  comes  it  should 
lie  on  other  commodities  than  food,  except  perhaps 
sugar,  one  half  of  which  is  a  luxury  consumption.  The 
ideal  would  be  for  it  to  be  levied  wholly  on  non-essentials 
in  order  that  it  should  be  a  burden  on  luxury  and  not 
on  necessity.  This  is  no  doubt  difficult  to  classify. 
Jewelry  and  furs  are  easy  to  class,  but  where  necessity 
leaves  off  and  luxury  begins  in  trousers  is  more  difficult 
to  determine. 

It  requires  no  lengthy  economic  or  moral  argument 
as  a  platform  for  denunciation  of  all  waste  and  useless 
expenditure.  Some  sane  medium  is  needed  between  com- 
fort and  luxury.  Failing  definition,  and  objection  to 
blue  laws,  the  theme  must  be  taken  into  the  area  of 
moral  virtues  and  becomes  a  proper  subject  for  the 
spiritual  stimulations  of  the  church.  There  Is  a 
psychology  in  luxury  wherein  we  all  buy  high-priced 
things  because  they  are  high-priced,  not  because  they 
add  comfort — and  this  has  contributed  also  to  our  high 
cost  of  living — for  those  who  do  it  drive  up  prices  on 
those  who  try  to  avoid  it.  From  an  economic  point  of 
view  the  only  recipe  is  taxation  as  a  device  to  make  it 
expensive. 

More  constructive  than  increasing  taxes  is  to  take 
a  holiday  on  governmental  expenditures  and  relieve  the 
taxpayer  generally.  If  we  could  stave  off  a  lot  of 
expensive  suggestions  for  a  few  years  and  secure  more 
efficiency  in  what  we  must  spend,  our  people  could  get 
ahead  with  the  process  of  earning  something  to  tax. 


AGRICULTURAL  READJUSTMENT      251 

It  Avould  at  least  be  comforting  to  this  great  farming 
and  business  community. 

There  is  a  great  weakness  in  our  present  railway 
situation  bearing  upon  the  farmer  and  consumer. 
Everyone  knows  of  the  annual  shortage  of  cars  during 
the  crop-moving  season.  Few  people,  however,  appre- 
ciate that  this  shortage  of  cars  often  amounts  to  a 
stricture  in  the  free  flow  of  commodities  from  the 
farmer  to  the  consumer.  The  result  is  that  the  farmer, 
in  order  to  sell  his  produce,  often  unknown  to  himself 
makes  a  sacrifice  in  price  in  local  glut.  The  consumer 
is  compelled  at  the  other  end  to  pay  an  increased  price 
for  foodstuffs  due  to  the  shortage  in  movement.  The 
constant  fluctuations  m  our  grain  exchanges  locally  or 
generally  from  this  cause  are  matters  of  public  record 
almost  monthly.  On  one  occasion  a  study  was  made 
under  my  administration  into  the  effect  of  car  short- 
age in  the  transportation  of  potatoes,  and  we  could 
demonstrate  by  chart  and  figure  that  the  margin  be- 
tween the  farmer  and  the  consumer  broadened  100  per 
cent,  in  periods  of  car  shortage.  Nor  did  the  middle- 
man make  this  whole  margin  of  profit,  because -he  was 
subjected  to  unusual  losses  and  destruction,  and  took 
unusual  risks  in  awaiting  a  market.  The  same  phenom- 
enon was  proved  in  a  large  way  at  the  time  of  acute 
shortage  of  movement  in  corn  and  other  grain. 

The  usual  remedy  for  this  situation  is  insistence  that 
the  railways  shall  provide  ample  rolling  stock,  track- 
age, and  terminals  to  take  care  of  the  annual  peak  load. 
We  have  fallen  far  behind  in  the  provisions  of  even 
normal  railway  equipment  during  the  war,  and  an  ad- 
ditional 500,000   cars  and  locomotives  are  no  doubt 


252  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

needed.  Above  a  certain  point,  however,  this  imposes 
upon  the  railways  a  great  investment  in  equipment  for 
use  during  a  comparatively  short  period  of  the  year 
when  many  commodities  synchronize  to  make  the  peak 
movement.  The  railways  naturally  wish  to  spread  the 
movement  over  a  longer  period.  The  burden  of  equip- 
ment for  short-time  use  will  probably  prevent  their 
ever  being  able  to  take  entire  care  of  the  annual  delays 
in  transport  and  stricture  in  market,  although  these 
can  be  greatly  minimized. 

There  is  possible  help  in  handling  the  peak  load  by 
improving  the  waterways  from  the  Great  Lakes  to  the 
Atlantic  seaboard  by  way  of  the  St.  Lawrence  River, 
so  as  to  pass  full  seagoing  cargoes.  It  has  already 
been  determined  that  the  project  is  entirely  feasible, 
and  at  comparatively  moderate  cost.  The  result  would 
be  to  place  every  port  on  the  Great  Lakes  on  the  seas. 
Fifteen  states  contiguous  to  the  Lakes  could  find  an 
outlet  for  a  portion  of  their  annual  surplus  quickly  and 
more  cheaply  to  the  overseas  markets  than  through  the 
congested  Eastern  trunk  rail  lines.  It  would  contribute 
materially  to  reduce  this  effectual  stricture  in  the  free 
flow  of  the  farmer's  commodities  -to  the  consumers. 

Of  far  greater  importance,  however,  is  the  fact  that 
the  costs  of  transportation  from  the  Lake  ports  to 
Europe  would  be  greatly  diminished,  and  this  dimin- 
ished cost  would  go  directly  into  the  farmer's  pockets. 
It  is  my  belief  that  there  is  a  saving  here  of  five  to  six 
cents  a  bushel  in  the  transportation  of  grain.  Although 
a  comparatively  small  proportion  of  our  total  grain 
production  flows  to  Europe,  I  believe  that  the  economic 
lift  on  this  minor  portion  would  raise  the  price  of  the 


AGRICULTURAL  READJUSTMENT   253 

whole  grain  production  by  the  amoxmt  saved  in  trans- 
portation of  this  portion  of  it.  The  price  of  export 
wheat,  rye;  and  barley — sometimes  corn — usually  hogs 
— in  Chicago  -at  normal  times  is  the  Liverpool  price, 
less  transportation  and  other  charges,  and  if  we 
decrease  the  transport  in  a  free  market  the  farmer 
should  get  the  difference. 

Not  only  should  there  be  great  benefits  to  the  agri- 
cultural population  but  it  should  be  a  real  benefit  to 
our  railways  in  getting  them  a  better  average  load 
without  the  cost,  of  maintaining  the  surplus  equipment 
and  personnel  necessary  to  manage  the  peak  load  dur- 
ing the  fall  months.  It  has  been  computed  that  the 
capital  saving  in  rolling  stock  alone  would  pay  for  the 
entire  cost  of  this  waterway  improvement  over  a  com- 
paratively few  years.  The  matter  also  becomes  of 
national  importance  in  finding  employment  for  the 
great  national  mercantile  fleet  that  we  have  created. 

Another  factor  in  transportation  bearing  upon  the 
problem  of  marketing  is  the  control  by  food  manufac- 
turing and  marketing  concerns  of  refrigeration  and 
other  special  types  of  cars.  This  special  control  has 
grown  up  largely  because,  owing  to  seasonal  changes 
in  regional  occupation  for  these  cars  over  different 
parts  of  the  country,  no  one  railway  wished  to  provide 
sufficient  special  cars  and  service  for  use  that  may  come 
its  way  only  part  of  the  year.  The  result  has  been  to 
force  the  building  up  of  a  domination  by  certain  con- 
cerns which  control  many  of  the  cars  and  stifle  free 
competition.  Much  the  same  results  have  been  attained 
by  special  groups  in  control  of  stockyards  and,  in  some 
cases,  of  elevators.     Where  such  formal  or  informal 


254  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

monopolies  grow  up,  they  are  public  utilities  and  if  the 
farmer  is  to  have  a  free  market  they  must  be  replaced 
by  constructive  public  service. 

Every  impediment  to  free  marketing  of  produce 
either  gives  special  privileges  or  increases  the  risks 
which  the  farmer  must  pay  for  in  diminished  returns. 
We  have  some  commodities  where  manufacture  has 
grown  into  such  units  that  these  units  exert  such  an 
influence  that  they  consciously  or  unconsciously  affect 
the  price  levels  of  the  farmer's  produce.  When  a  few 
concerns  have  the  duty  of  manufacturing  and  storing 
the  seasonal  reserves  of  a  single  commodity  they  natur- 
ally reduce  prices  during  the  heavy-production  season 
and  increase  them  in  the  short  season  as  a  method  of 
diminishing  their  risk  and  increasing  profits.  More- 
over, their  tendency  is  often  to  sell  the  minor  portion 
of  their  product  that  goes  for  export  at  lower  than  the 
domestic  price  in  order  to  dispose  of  it  without  depress- 
ing local  prices.  They  do  not  need  to  conspire,  for 
there  can  be  perfectly  coincident  action  to  meet  the 
same  economic  currents.  Such  coincidence  has  much 
greater  possibilities  of  general  influence  with  a  few  con- 
cerns in  the  field  than  if  there  were  many. 

The  experience  gained  in  the  Food  Administration 
on  these  problems  during  the  war  led  to  the  feeling, 
expressed  at  that  time,  that  such  business  should  be 
confined  to  one  line  of  activity,  just  as  we  have  had  to 
confine  our  railways,  banks,  and  insurance  companies. 
This  is  useful  to  prevent  reliance  being  placed  upon  the 
profits  of  alternative  products  when  engaged  in  stifling 
of  competition,  through  selling  below  cost  on  some 
other  item.    Even  this  restriction  may  not  prove  to  be 


AGRICULTURAL  READJUSTMENT   255 

sufficient  protection  to  free  market  by  free  competition. 

I  am  not  a  believer  in  nationalization  as  the  solution 
to  this  form  of  domination,  but  I  am  a  believer  in  reg- 
ulation, if  it  should  prove  necessary.  If  experience 
proves  we  have  to  go  to  regulation,  it  is  my  belief  that 
it  should  be  confined  to  overswollen  units  and  that  the 
point  of  departure  should  not  be  the  amount  of  capital 
employed  but  the  proportion  of  a  given  commodity  that 
is  controlled.  The  point  of  departure  must  depend 
upon  the  special  commodity  and  its  ratio  to  the  whole. 
When  such  a  concern  obtains  such  dimensions  that  it 
can  influence  prices  or  dominate  public  affairs,  either 
with  deliberation  or  innocence,  then  it  must  be  placed 
under  regulation  and  restraint.  Our  people  have  long 
since  realized  the  advantage  of  large  business  operation 
in  improving  and  cheapening  the  costs  of  manufacture 
and  distribution,  but  when  these  operations  have  be- 
come so  enlarged  that  they  are  able  to  dominate  the 
community  it  becomes  a  social  necessity  that  they  shall 
be  made  responsible  to  the  community. 

The  test  that  should  apply,  therefore,  is  not  the  size 
of  the  institution  or  the  volume  of  capital  that  it 
employs,  but  the  proportion  of  the  commodity  that  it 
controls  in  its  operations. 

It  is  my  belief  that  if  this  were  made  the  datum  point 
for  regulation,  and  if  regulation  were  made  of  a  rigor- 
ous order,  this  pressure  would  result  in  such  business 
keeping  below  the  limit  of  regulation.  Thus  the  auto- 
matic result  would  be  the  building  up  of  a  proper  com- 
petition, because  men  in  manufacturing  would  rather 
conduct  a  smaller  business  free  of  governmental  reg- 
ulation than  enjoy  large  operations  subject  to  govern- 


256  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

mental  control.  There  are  probably  only  a  very  few 
concerns  in  the  United  States  that  would  fall  into  this 
category  and  they  should  be  glad  of  regulation  in  order 
to  secure  freedom  from  criticism. 

There  are  three  kinds  of  speculation  and  profiteering 
in  the  food  trades.  The  first  is  of  the  inherent  or  specu- 
lative character  of  foodstuffs  due  to  their  seasonal 
nature.  The  farmer,  more  by  habit  than  necessity, 
usually  markets  the  bulk  of  his  grain  in  the  fall.  By 
necessity  he  must  market  his  animals  at  certain  seasons, 
for  they  must  be  bred  at  certain  seasonable  periods, 
they  must  be  fed  at  certain  seasons,  and  thus  come  to 
market  in  waves  of  production  larger  than  the  im- 
mediate demand.  In  perishables  he  must  market  fairly 
promptly,  as  he  cannot  himself  maintain  necessary 
special  types  of  storage.  Thus  the  dealer  must  spec- 
ulate on  carrying  the  commodities  for  distribution 
during  the  period  of  short  production,  while  the  farmer 
markets  in  time  of  surplus  production. 

While  full  competitive  conditions  might  reduce  the 
charges  for  this  hazard  there  is  a  possibility  of  reducing 
the  hazard  by  better  organization  and  consequently 
the  charge  for  the  hazard  that  is  now  debited  to  the 
farmer.  It  is  worth  an  exhaustive  national  investiga- 
tion to  detei'mine  whether  an  extension  of  a  system  of 
central  markets  would  not  afford  great  help.  I  do  not 
mean  the  extension  of  our  so-called  exchange  dealing  in 
local  produce  but  the  creation  of  great  central  exchange 
markets  with  responsibilities  for  service  to  the  entire 
people.  This  help  arises  in  two  ways.  The  first  is  the 
hourly  determination  of  price  at  great  centers  that  all 
may  know,  and  thus  the  farmer  protects  himself  against 


AGRICULTURAL  READJUSTMENT   257 

local  variations  and  manipulation.  The  second  is  a 
system  of  forward  contracts  through  such  a  market 
between  farmer  and  consumer  on  standardized  com- 
modities. Such  contracts  in  effect  remove  the  necessity 
of  a  speculative  middleman.  This  system  exists  in 
grain  and  cotton  and  in  its  processes  eliminates  a  large 
part  of  the  hazard  and  carries  the  commodity  at  the 
lower  rate  of  interest. 

The  present  trouble  with  the  system  of  future  con- 
tracts is  that  it  lends  itself  to  manipulation,  but  I  be- 
lieve this  could  be  eliminated. 

If  we  take  the  case  of  potatoes,  here  is  an  unstand- 
ardized  seasonal  commodity,  with  no  national  market 
and  therefore  no  established  daily  price  as  a  datum 
point.  A  grower  in  Florida,  Maine,  or  Wisconsin, 
through  a  local  agent  or  through  local  sale,  consigns 
potatoes  to  Pittsburgh  because  a  larger  price  is  re- 
ported there  than  in  Chicago,  The  grower  can  usually 
make  no  actual  sale  to  an  actual  retailer  or  wholesaler 
at  destination  because  the  buyer  has  no  assurance  of 
qualit3\  Coincident  shipment  from  many  points  to  a 
hopeful  market  almost  daily  produces  a  local  glut  at 
receiving  points  somewhere  in  the  country.  Often 
enough  the  shipper  gets  no  return  but  a  bill  for  freight, 
and  the  perishables  sometimes  rot  in  the  yards. 

If  potatoes  were  standardized  and  sold  on  contract 
in  national  market,  protected  from  manipulation,  three 
things  would  result.  First,  there  would  be  a  daily 
national  price  known  to  growers.  Second,  by  the  sale 
of  a  contract  for  delivery  the  grower  would  be  assured 
of  this  price.  Third,  the  contract  and  directions  for 
shipment  would  flow  naturally  to  the  distributor  where 


258  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTUKE 

the  potatoes  were  needed,  and  thus  the  present  fearfully 
wasteful  system  would  be  mitigated. 

Potatoes  would  be  a  most  difficult  case  to  handle ; 
dried  beans,  peas,  even  butter,  and  cheese  would  be 
easier.  I  am  not  advocating  widespread  dealing  in 
futures,  but  short  contracts  giving  time  for  delivery 
would  probably  greatly  decrease  the  margin  between 
farmer  and  local  distributor  by  saving  great  wastes  in 
transport,  spoilage,  and  manipulation. 

The  second  class  of  speculation  is  one  largely  of  the 
war  as  a  period  of  rising  prices  growing  out  of  inflation, 
and  so  forth.  It  lies  in  the  marking  up  of  goods  on  the 
shelf  to  the  level  of  the  rising  daily  market.  This  mark- 
ing up  has  been  one  of  the  large  factors  in  increasing 
the  margin  during  the  war.  No  better  example  exists 
than  the  rise  of  flour  during  the  1916-1917  harvest 
vear,  referred  to  elsewhere.  We  shall  have  a  remedy 
for  this  the  moment  the  tide  of  inflation  turns.  The 
farmer  and  consumer  cannot,  however,  expect  that  they 
will  get  even,  during  such  a  reverse  period,  for  their 
losses  on  the  rise,  because  the  trades  have  too  great  an 
individual  power  of  resistance  against  selling  goods  at 
a  loss.  Anyway,  the  marking  up  of  goods  will  cease 
when  prices  cease  to  rise — and  there  is  a  limit. 

The  third  class  of  speculation  is  wholly  vicious.  That 
is  the  purchase  of  foodstuffs  in  times  of  rising  economic 
levels,  sheerly  for  the  rise  in  price  or  the  deliberate 
manipulation  of  markets  during  normal  times.  These 
operations  are  against  the  common  welfare;  they  can 
find  no  moral  or  economic  justification.  They  are  not 
to  be  reached  by  prosecution ;  they  must  be  reached  by 
prevention.    Our  great  boards  of  trade  in  fine  patriotic 


AGRICULTURAL  READJUSTMENT   259 

spirit  proved  their  ability  during  the  war  to  control 
deliberate  manipulation  of  grain  and  other  futures. 
Both  of  the  two  latter  types  of  speculation  are  an  im- 
pediment to  free  markets  and  they  become  an  unneces- 
sary charge  on  the  margin. 

There  can  be  no  question  of  the  improvement  in 
position  of  both  farmer  and  consumer  in  cases  where 
cooperative  marketing  can  be  organized.  The  high 
development  of  cooperative  citrus-fruit  marketing  has 
resulted  in  lower  average  prices  to  consumer,  better 
quality  and  better  return  to  the  grower.  Here  is  a 
case  of  scientific  distribution  lamentably  absent  in 
many  other  commodities.  There  are  other  specialized 
jjroducts  to  which  it  could  be  well  extended.  To  reach 
its  best  development  it  should  have  parallel  cooperative 
development  among  consumers  as  discussed  elsewhere. 

There  are  man}-^  ways  of  assisting  the  agricultural 
industry  not  pertinent  to  this  discussion  on  the  cost  of 
distribution.  They  do  demand  inquiry  and  public 
illumination ;  most  of  them  do  not  demand  legislation  so 
much  as  public  education  and  consideration  when  leg- 
islating on  other  subjects.  Our  agricultural  interests 
also  need  a  foreign  policy.  For  instance,  during  the 
last  month  there  has  been  a  consolidation  of  control  of 
buying  in  world  markets  by  the  European  governments. 
How  far  it  may  be  extended  in  its  policies  Is  not  clear. 
Nevertheless,  a  combination  of  importers  In  all  Europe 
under  government  control  could  make  the  prices  on 
every  farm  In  the  United  States. 

As  the  datum  point  of  price  determination  is  the 
wholesaler's  market,  the  accretions  of  charge  for  distri- 
bution from  that  point  forward,  the  economy  or  ex- 


260  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTXJRE 

travagance  in  these  costs,  are  of  primary  interest  to 
the  consumer.  The  same  phenomena — of  marking  up 
goods  on  the  shelf,  calculating  profits  not  on  com- 
modities but  on  dollars  handled,  a  minor  amount  of 
vicious  speculation,  the  passing  on  of  excess-profits 
tax — are  present  in  these  trades  during  the  past  years. 
A  much  more  pertinent  phenomenon  in  unduly  increas- 
ing their  margins  is  the  increasing  demands  of  the  con- 
sumer as  to  scrviqc.  Several  deliveries  daily,  purchases 
on  credit,  the  abandonment  of  the  market  basket  in 
favor  of  the  telephone  have  many  costs.  One  of  them, 
much  overlooked,  is  that  customers  must  always  have 
first  quality  when  they  buy  blind  over  the  telephone,  and 
the  seconds  and  thirds,  of  equal  food  value  in  many 
commodities,  go  to  waste  and  are  added  to  the  price  of 
the  firsts.  That  there  are  some  people  in  the  United 
States  who  want  to  buy  sanely  is  evidenced  by  the  400 
per  cent,  increase  in  cash-and-carry  shops,  which  do 
business  on  approximately  sixty  per  cent,  of  the  cost 
of  the  delivery-and-credit  shops. 

There  are  also  many  people  in  the  final  stages  of  dis- 
tribution. One  cit}'  in  the  United  States  has  one  meat 
retailer  for  every  400  inhabitants ;  it  would  be  equally 
well  served  with  one  dealer  to  every  1,200.  The  result 
is  high  margin  to  the  retailers  and  no  out-of-the-way 
income  to  any  of  them.  There  is  no  very  immediate 
remedy  for  this.  One  possibility  is  an  extension  of 
cooperative  buying  by  consumers.  It  has  proved  a 
great  success  abroad.  It  is  not  socialism,  for  it  arises 
from  voluntary  action  and  initiative  among  the  people 
themselves. 

There  is  now  a  tendency  to  ill  balance  between  the 


AGRICULTURAL  READJUSTMENT   261 

agricultural  and  general  industry.  For  many  years 
we  were  large  exporters  of  food  and  importers  of 
manufactured  goods.  We  gradually  imported  mouths, 
manufactured  our  own  goods,  and  just  as  rapidly  dimin- 
ished our  food  exports.  Up  to  the  point  where  we  con- 
sumed our  own  food  and  manufactured  our  own  goods 
it  has  been  a  great  national  development. 

Our  annual  exports  of  food  decreased  during  the  past 
twenty-five  years  from  some  fifteen  million  tons  to 
about  six  millions  just  before  the  European  war.  In 
the  meantime  we  increased  import  of  such  commodities 
as  sugar,  rice,  vegetable  oils,  until  our  net  exports  were 
about  five  million  tons.  Of  all  kinds  of  food  exported 
this  probably  represents  the  decreased  exports  of  from 
twenty-five  to  thirty  per  cent,  of  our  production  down 
to  five  per  cent,  of  it. 

During  the  war  we  gave  special  stimulus  to  food  pro- 
duction and  produced  greater  economies  in  consump- 
tion, so  that  these  later  years  somewhat  befog  the  real 
current,  for  our  agricultural  surplus  in  normal  years 
is  really  very  small.  During  the  war  and  since,  we  have 
given  great  stimulus  to  our  manufacturing  industries. 
If  we  shall  continue  to  build  up  our  manufacturing 
industries  and  our  export  trade  without  corresponding 
encouragement  to  agriculture  we  shall  soon  have  more 
mouths  in  our  country  than  we  can  feed  on  our  own 
produce.  We  shall,  like  the  European  states  which 
have  devoted  themselves  to  industrial  development, 
ultimately  become  dependent  upon  oA'erseas  food  sup- 
plies. If  wo  examine  their  situation  we  find  the  very 
life  of  their  people  is  thus  dependent  upon  maintaining 
open  free  access  to  overseas  markets. 


262  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

From  this  necessity  have  grown  the  great  naval 
armaments  of  the  world,  and  the  burden  they  imply  on 
all  sections  of  their  population.  Such  nations,  of  neces- 
sity, have  engaged  in  fierce  competition  for  markets  for 
their  industrial  products.  Thus  they  built  up  the 
background  of  world  conflicts.  The  titanic  struggles 
that  have  resulted  have  endangered  the  very  lives  of 
their  people  by  starvation.  Their  war  tactics  have,  in 
large  degree,  been  directed  to  strangle  food  supplies. 
One  other  result  of  this  development  is  the  terrible 
congestion  of  populations  in  manufacturing  areas,  with 
all  the  social  and  human  difficulties  that  this  implies. 
There  is  a  jeopardy  in  industrial  over-development 
which  has  received  too  little  attention  because  the  world 
has  experienced  it  only  during  the  past  eighteen  months. 
In  times  of  industrial  depression  or  great  increase  in  the 
cost  of  living,  whether  brought  about  by  war  or  by  the 
ebb  and  flow  of  world  prosperity,  these  populations, 
oppressed  with  misery,  turn  to  political  remedies  for 
matters  that  are  beyond  human  control.  They  natur- 
ally resent  the  lowering  of  their  standards  of  living, 
and  they  inevitably  resort  to  industrial  strife,  to  strikes 
and  disorder.  Theirs  is  the  breeding  ground  of  radical- 
ism— for  all  such  phenomena  belong  to  the  towns  and 
not  to  the  country. 

By  and  large,  our  industries  are  now  in  a  high  state 
of  prosperity.  More  favorable  hours,  more  favorable 
wages,  are  to-day  offered  in  industry  than  in  agricul- 
ture. The  industries  are  drawing  the  workers  from  our 
farms.  If  this  balance  in  relative  returns  is  to  con- 
tinue we  face  a  gradual  decrease  in  our  agricultural 
productivity.     If  wc  should  develop  our  industrial  side 


AGRICULTURAL  READJUSTMENT      263 

during  the  next  five  years  as  rapidly  as  we  have  during 
the  past  five  years  we  shall  by  that  time  be  faced  with 
the  necessity  to  import  foodstuffs  to  supplement  our 
own  food  supplies. 

Some  economists  will  argue,  of  course,  that  if  we 
can  manufacture  goods  cheaper  than  the  rest  of  the 
world  and  exchange  them  for  foodstuffs  abroad  we 
should  do  so.  But  such  arguments  again  ignore  certain 
fundamental  social  and  broad  political  questions.  These 
dangers  have  become  more  emphasized  by  experience  of 
the  war.  From  dependence  on  overseas  supplies  for 
food  we  shall,  by  the  very  concern  that  will  grow  in 
the  public  mind  as  to  the  safety  of  these  supplies,  soon 
find  ourselves  discussing  the  question  of  dominating  the 
seas.  Our  international  relations  will  have  become 
infinitely  more  complex  and  more  difficult.  Unless  the 
League  of  Nations  serves  its  ideal  we  shall  need  to 
burden  ourselves  with  more  taxation  to  maintain  great 
naval  and  military  forces. 

But  of  far  more  importance  than  this  is  that  the 
social  stability  of  our  country,  the  development  of  our 
national  life,  rests  in  the  spirit  of  our  farms  and  sur- 
rounds our  villages.  These  are  the  sources  that  have 
always  supplied  our  country  with  its  true  Americanism, 
its  new  and  fresh  minds,  its  physical  and  its  moral 
strength.  Industry's  real  market  is  with  the  farmer 
by  the  constant  increase  of  his  standard  of  living.  We 
want  our  exports  to  grow  in  exchange  for  commodities 
we  need  from  abroad,  but  we  want  them  to  grow  in  tune 
with  our  social  and  political  interests,  and  to  do  so  they 
must  grow  in  step  with  our  agriculture. 

In  conclusion,  we  are  in  a  period  of  high  inflation  and 


264  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

shortage  of  world  production,  and  consequent  abnormal 
prices.  The  tide  is  likely  to  turn  almost  any  time. 
Some  of  the  outrageous  margin  between  the  farmer  and 
consumer  will  be  lessened  by  the  turn  in  the  tide  itself, 
for  it  will  eliminate  the  marking  up  of  goods  and  the 
opportunity  of  vicious  speculation.  The  dangers  of  the 
turn  are  twofold.  First,  that  unless  we  constructively 
remedy  the  unnecessary  margin  between  the  farmer 
and  the  wholesaler  the  farmer  will  receive  the  brunt  of 
the  fall  long  before  the  supplies  he  must  buy  and  labor 
he  must  employ  will  have  fallen  into  step.  It  will  bring 
to  him  the  greatest  suffering  in  the  community.  The 
farmer's  position  can  be  remedied  by  better  distribution 
of  the  tax  load,  by  improvement  in  our  transportation 
system,  by  getting  our  markets  free  of  impediments  to 
free  flow  of  competition,  and  by  constructive  improve- 
ment in  our  whole  distribution  system.  The  consumer 
will  get  relief  from  deflation,  improvement  in  world 
production,  and  by  eliminating  the  same  wastes  and 
unnecessary   costs   in   our  distribution   system. 

The  second  danger  is  that  deflation  Itself  will  take 
place  without  constructive  consideration.  Great  wis- 
dom will  be  required  on  the  part  of  our  Government  in 
its  great  control  of  credit  that  it  shall  take  place 
progressively  and  with  care,  in  order  that  there  shall 
be  no  sudden  breaks,  with  their  resulting  demoraliza- 
tion, unemployment,  and  misery. 

We  require  a  careful  balance  of  general  industry  to 
agriculture.  We  cannot  afford  to  build  this  nation  into 
an  industrial  state  dependent  upon  other  lands  for  Its 
food  supply.  We  want  our  industries  to  grow,  but  we 
want  agriculture  to  grow  in  pace  with  them.     Many  of 


AGRICULTURAL  READJUSTMENT      265 

our  farmers  made  great  sacrifices  in  the  war;  they  do 
not  want  to  be  coddled  in  peace ;  but  they  must  have 
an  equality  of  opportunity  with  all  the  other  elements 
in  the  country. 


THE  FARMER  AS  A  SCIENTIST 


XX 

TRIUMPHS  OF  SCIENTIFIC  AGRICULTURE  * 

George  W.  Fiske 

Efficiency  is  everywhere  demanded  by  the  spirit  of 
our  times.  We  are  living  in  an  age  that  does  things. 
Whatever  the  difficulties,  it  somehow  gets  things  done. 
It  brings  to  pass  even  the  seemingly  impossible.  Are 
there  mountains  in  the  way.'*  It  goes  over,  under,  or 
through.  —  There  are  no  mountains !  Is  there  an 
isthmus,  preventing  the  union  of  great  seas  and  block- 
ing commerce?  It  erases  the  Isthmus  from  the  woi"ld's 
map. — There  is  no  isthmus !  The  masterful  time-spirit 
has  little  patience  with  puttering  inefficiency.  It 
expects  every  man  to  pull  his  weight,  to  earn  his  keep, 
to  do  his  own  task,  and  not  to  whimper. 

Our  cities  are  hives  of  efficiency,  cruel  efficienc}'  often. 
With  new  pace-makers  every  year,  the  wheels  of  indus- 
try speed  ever  faster,  raising  the  percentage  of  elTec- 
tiveness,  per  dollar  of  capital,  and  per  capita  employed. 
Hundreds  at  the  wheels,  with  scant  nerves,  fail  to  keep 
the  pace;  and  the  race  goes  by  them.  But  the  pace 
keeps  up.  Other  workmen  grow  more  deft  and  skilful. 
The  product  is  both  cheapened  and  perfected.  The 
plant  becomes  more  profitable,  under  fine  executive  ef- 
ficiency. The  junk-heap  grows  apace:  Out  goes  every 
obsolete    half-success.      In    comes    every   new   machine 

*  From  "The  Challenge  of  tbe  Country,"  by  permission  of  the  publishers, 
the  Association  Press. 

2G9 


270  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

which  reduces  friction,  doubles  results,  halves  the  cost 
of  maintenance,  and  swells  dividends.  Surely  efficiency 
is  the  modern  shibboleth. 

Here  is  the  new  Tungsten  electric  lamp,  which  uses 
half  the  current,  at  low  voltage,  but  doubles  the  light ; 
the  very  dazzling  symbol  of  efficiency.  How  it  anti- 
quates  the  best  Edison  lamp  of  yesterday!  Yet  the 
Tungsten  becomes  old-fashioned  in  a  year.  It  is  too 
fragile  land  is  speedily  displaced  by  the  improved 
Mazda. 

But  city  life  has  no  monopoly  on  efficiency.  In  fact 
we  do  not  find  in  the  mills  or  factories  the  best  illustra- 
tions of  modern  effectiveness.  We  have  to  go  back  to 
the  soil.  Agriculture  has  become  the  newest  of  the  arts, 
by  the  grace  of  modern  science.  To  make  two  blades 
of  grass  grow  where  one  grew  before  is  too  easy  now. 
Multiplying  by  two  is  small  boys'  play.  Burbank  has 
out-Edisoned  Edison !  He  and  other  experimenters  in 
the  scientific  breeding  of  plants  and  animals  have 
increased  the  efficiency  of  every  live  farmer  in  the  land, 
and  have  added  perhaps  a  billion  dollars  a  year  to  the 
nation's  wealth. 

They  have  not  yet  crossed  the  bee  and  the  firefly,  as 
some  one  has  suggested,  to  produce  an  illuminated  bee 
that  could  work  at  night  by  his  own  light.  Nor  have 
they  produced  woven-wire  fences  by  crossing  the  spider 
and  the  wire-worm!  Not  yet;  but  they  have  done 
better.  By  skillful  cross-breeding,  they  have  raised  the 
efficiency  of  the  sugar  beet  from  7  per  cent,  to  15  per 
cent,  sugar.  They  have  produced  hardy,  seedless 
oranges,  plums,  apples,  and  strawberry  plants  which 
will  stand  the  climate  of  the  frozen  North.     They  have 


SCIENTIFIC  AGRICULTURE  271 

developed  fine,  long-stapled  cotton,  high-yielding  cereal 
grains,  and  mammoth  carnations  and  chrysanthemums. 
They  have  produced  the  wonderberry,  the  Wealthy 
Apple,  and  the  Burbank  Potato.  They  have  developed 
flax  with  25  per  cent,  more  seed.  And  the  "Minnesota 
Number  Thirteen  Corn,"  so  hardy  and  sure,  has  car- 
ried the  cornbelt  in  three  great  states  fully  fifty  miles 
further  to  the  north,  with  its  magnificent  wake  of  golden 
profits.  No  wonder  America  feeds  the  world.  Such  is 
our  splendid  Yankee  genius  for  efficiency.  It  is  the 
master-spirit,  the  ruling  genius  of  our  age;  and  it 
shows  itself  best  on  our  fields  and  prairies.  Other 
nations  compete  fairly  well  with  our  manufactures. 
They  outstrip  us  in  commerce.  But  they  are  hope- 
lessly behind  our  American  agriculture.  The  farm  prod- 
ucts of  this  country  amounted  in  the  year  1910  to 
almost  nine  billion  dollars.  The  corn  crop  alone  was 
worth  a  billion  and  a  half;  enough  to  cancel  the  entire 
interest-bearing  debt  of  the  United  States,  buy  all  of 
the  gold  and  silver  mined  in  all  the  countries  of  the 
earth  in  1909,  and  still  leave  the  farmers  pocket- 
money.* 

In  all  fairness  it  must  be  said,  the  modern  gospel 
of  progressiveness  has  not  been  everywhere  accepted, 
far  from  it.  Plenty  of  farmers,  doubtless  the  majority, 
are  still  following  the  old  traditions.  Country  folks  as 
a  rule  are  conservative.  They  like  the  old  ways  and 
are  suspicious  of  "new-fangled  notions."  Director 
Bailey  of  Cornell  enjoys  telling  the  comment  he  over- 
heard one  day  from  a  farmer  of  this  sort.  It  was  after 
he  had  been  speaking  at  a  rural  life  conference,  doubt- 

•  Report  of  U.  S.  Sec.  of  Apri.  for  1910,  p.  11. 


272  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

less  proposing  various  plans  for  better  farming,  which 
differed  from  the  honored  superstitions  of  the  neighbor- 
hood. A  stolid  native  was  overheard  saying  to  his 
neighbor,  "John,  let  them  blow!  They  can't  hurt  me 
none."  He  prided  himself  on  being  immune  to  all  ap- 
peals at  such  a  rural  life  revival. 

Such  a  man  is  very  common  among  the  hills,  and 
wherever  the  soil  is  poor;  but  he  is  beginning  to  feel 
lonesome  in  really  prosperous  rural  communities,  for 
the  new  agriculture  is  fast  winning  its  way.  That  is, 
the  application  of  science  to  agriculture  has  proved  its 
efficiency  by  actual  tangible  results.  A  farmer  may 
be  so  superstitious  as  to  begin  nothing  on  a  Friday,  nor 
butcher  during  a  waning  moon  for  fear  his  meat  will 
shrink,  nor  use  an  iron  plow  for  fear  it  may  poison  the 
soil !  But  when  his  neighbor  by  modern  methods  adds 
50  per  cent,  to  his  crop,  he  knows  there  must  be  some- 
thing in  it.  The  new  tlieory  he  always  greets  with  "I 
don't  believe  it!"  -but  the  knock-down  argument  of 
facts  compels  his  reluctant  faith.  Soon  he  gives  the 
new  heresy  a  trial  himself;  and  success  makes  him  a 
convert  to  the  new  gospel. 

An  experience  like  this  is  a  serious  thing  for  a  hide- 
bound consers^ative,  long  wedded  to  old  methods.  It 
means  that  "the  former  things  are  passed  away  and 
behold  all  things  are  become  new."  He  loses  his  super- 
stitions as  he  discovers  the  laws  of  cause  and  effect. 
He  gradually  concludes  that  farming  is  not  a  matter 
of  luck  but  largely  a  matter  of  science;  that  it  is 
not  merely  tickling  Dame  Nature  till  she  grudgingly 
shares  her  bounties,  but  that  it  is  a  scientific  process, 
the   laws   of  which   may  be  discovered.      This   means 


SCIENTIFIC  AGRICULTURE  273 

mental  growth  for  the  farmer,  the  stimulus  of  many  new 
ideas  which  bring  wider  horizons  and  a  larger  life;  and 
incidentally  a  heightened  respect  for  his  own  life-work. 

The  old-fashioned  farmer,  particularly  in  America 
where  methods  have  been  so  wasteful  because  of  the 
cheapness  of  land,  has  planted  and  harvested  just  for 
the  season's  returns,  with  little  regard  for  the  future. 
The  modern  farmer,  self-respecting  and  far-sighted, 
plans  for  the  future  welfare  of  his  farm.  He  learns 
how  to  analyze  and  treat  his  soil  and  to  conserve  its 
fertility,  just  as  he  would  protect  his  capital  in  any 
business  investment.  Scientific  management  and  farm 
economy  are  taking  the  place  of  mere  soil-mining  and 
reckless  waste.  The  best  farmers  plan  to  leave  their 
farms  a  little  more  fertile  than  they  found  them.  Good 
authorities  in  rural  economics  assert  that  if  depletion 
of  soil  fertility  were  taken  into  account,  the  wasteful 
methods  of  American  agriculture  in  the  past,  though 
producing  apparently  large  returns,  have  actually  been 
unprofitable.  So  long  as  new  land  could  easily  be 
obtained  from  the  government  for  a  mere  song  and  a 
few  months'  patience,  the  pioneer  farmer  was  utterly 
careless  in  his  treatment  of  the  soil.  He  moved  from 
state  to  state,  skimming  the  fat  of  the  land  but  never 
fertilizing,  following  the  frontier  line  westward  and 
leaving  half-wasted  lands  in  his  trail. 

It  was  really  a  blessing  to  the  land  when  the  scarcity 
of  free  homesteads  brought  this  wasteful  process 
towards  its  end.  When  new  lands  became  scarce,  the 
farms  of  the  Middle  West  increased  in  value.  For 
twenty  years  farm  values  have  been  rising  steadily,  with 
two  evident  results :  intensive  farming  and  speculation. 


274  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

The  demoralizing  effects  of  the  latter  are  at  once  ap- 
parent. It  was  a  sad  day  when  the  prairie  farmer 
ceased  to  think  of  his  farm  as  a  permanent  home,  but  as 
a  speculative  asset.  But  it  was  a  good  day  for  the 
business  of  farming  when  the  farmer  discovered  the  need 
of  more  careful,  intensive  cultivation  to  keep  pace  with 
rising  values.  This  marks  the  beginning  of  scientific 
thoroughness  and  efficiency  in  our  tilling  of  the  soil. 

Just  then  something  very  timely  happened.  The 
modern  period  of  American  agriculture  really  dates 
from  1887,  when  Congress,  by  the  Hatch  Act,  estab- 
lished the  first  national  system  of  agricultural  experi- 
ment stations  in  the  world.  Previous  to  this  date  there 
had  been  a  few  private  and  state  enterprises ;  but  this 
Act  of  Congress  established  at  public  expense  an  experi- 
ment station  in  every  state  and  territory.  The  vast 
usefulness  of  this  movement  in  developing  a  real  science 
of  agriculture  is  evident  from  this  paragraph  from  the 
law: 

Sec.  2.  That  it  shall  be  the  object  and  duty  of  said  experiment 
stations  to  conduct  original  researches  or  verify  experiments  on 
the  physiology  of  plants  and  animals;  the  diseases  to  which  they 
are  severally  subject,  with  the  remedies  for  the  same;  the  chemical 
composition  of  useful  plants  at  their  different  stages  of  growth; 
the  comparative  advantages  of  rotative  cropping,  as  pursued  under 
the  varying  series  of  crops ;  the  capacity  of  new  plants  or  trees  for 
acclimation;  the  analysis  of  soils  and  water;  the  chemical  com- 
position of  manures,  natural  or  artificial,  with  experiments  de- 
signed to  test  their  comparative  effects  on  crops  of  different 
kinds;  the  adaptation  and  value  of  grasses  and  forage  plants;  the 
composition  and  digestibility  of  the  different  kinds  of  food  for 
domestic  animals;  the  scientific  and  economic  questions  involved 
in  the  production  of  butter  and  cheese,  et  cetera. 

As  a  result  of  this  and  later  laws,  over  three  millions 
of  dollars  are  now  spent  annually,  by  the  national  and 
state  governments,  to  support  experiment  station  work. 


SCIENTIFIC  AGRICULTURE  275 

Over  a  thousand  men  are  employed  in  the  investigations 
and  their  publications  cover  practically  the  whole  range 
of  the  science  and  art  of  agriculture.  About  five  hun- 
dred separate  bulletins  are  issued  each  year,  which  may 
be  obtained  free  on  application. 

This  great  chain  of  experiment  stations  is  working 
wonders.  In  cooperation  with  the  agricultural  colleges 
and  the  U.  S.  Department  of  Agriculture,  they  are  rais- 
ing agriculture  to  scientific  levels.  They  are,  by  their 
laboratory  work,  doing  the  farmer's  experimenting  for 
him  and  doing  it  better  and  with  greater  certainty. 
Thus  they  are  eliminating  much  of  the  uncertainty  and 
"luck"  from  farming  which  has  been  its  curse  and  dis- 
couragement. And  thus  they  are  equipping  the  farmer 
to  cope  more  effectively  with  the  difficulties  of  nature 
and  to  put  up  a  more  confident  fight  with  stubborn 
climate  and  fickle  weather,  because  he  knows  the 
scientific  points  of  the  game. 

The  opening  of  rich  prairie  lands  to  cultivation,  with 
the  marvels  of  extensive  agriculture,  is  a  wonderful 
story.  But  intensive  farming  has  its  own  triumphs,^ 
though  they  may  be  less  spectacular.  There  is  some- 
thing that  wins  our  respect  in  the  careful,  thorough 
methods  of  European  agriculture,  by  which  whole 
nations  are  able  to  make  a  living  on  tiny  farms  by 
intensive  farming.  Tilling  every  little  scrap  of  ground, 
even  roadside  and  dooryard,  and  guarding  the  soil  fer- 
tility as  the  precious  business  capital  of  the  family,  it  is 
wonderful  how  few  square  rods  can  be  made  to  sustain 
a  large  family. 

Frugality  is  not  attractive  to  Americans,  especially 
the  European  type  which  often  means  peasant  farming. 


276  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

and  a  low  scale  of  living.  We  are  discovering,  however, 
the  vast  possibilities  of  farm  economy  and  intensive  cul- 
tivation.    Professor  Carver  says: 

"Where  land  is  cheap   and  labor   dear,  wasteful   and  extensive 

farming  is  natural,  and  it  is  useless  to  preach  against  it 

We  always  tend  to  waste  that  which  is  cheap  and  economize  that 
which  is  dear.  The  condition  of  this  country  in  all  the  preceding 
periods  dictated  the  wasteful  use  of  land  and  the  economic  use  of 
labor,  as  shown  by  the  unprecedented  development  of  agricultural 
machinery.  But  as  land  becomes  dearer,  relatively  to  labor,  as  it 
inevitably  will,  the  tendency  will  be  equally  inevitable  toward  more 
intensive  agriculture,  that  is,  toward  a  system  which  produces 
more  per  acre.  This  will  foUow  through  the  normal  working  of 
economic  laws,  as  surely  as  water  will  flow  down  hill. 

It  is  wonderful  what  can  be  accomplished  by  intensive 
cultivation.  If  the  old  New  England  orchards  were 
given  as  thorough  care  and  treatment  as  the  scien- 
tifically tended  and  doctored  apple  trees  of  Oregon,  the 
results  would  surprise  the  oldest  citizen!  Conserving 
moisture  and  keeping  the  soil  clean  from  weeds  is 
worth  all  the  painstaking  care  it  requires.  The  renova- 
tion of  the  soil  by  regular  fertilizing  is  a  lesson  the 
wasteful  West  is  slowly  learning,  coupled  with  scientific 
schemes  of  crop  rotation  to  conserve  the  soil's  quality. 
Farmers  are  astonishingly  slow  to  adopt  these  methods, 
however,  thinking  that  they  know  best  the  needs  of  their 
own  soil.  The  North  Dakota  experiment  station  is 
inducing  farmers  to  adopt  their  advice  as  to  seed  selec- 
tion and  crop  rotation  with  the  promise  to  set  aside 
five  acres  for  experimentation  in  accordance  with  the 
advice  given.  This  is  extremely  wise  policy.  Doubt- 
less, if  directions  are  faithfully  followed,  the  contrast 
with  the  rest  of  the  farm  will  be  highly  favorable  to 
the  five-acre  lot  and  agricultural  progress  will  win  out. 

In  the  earlier  pages  we  have  already  alluded  to  this 


SCIENTIFIC  AGRICULTURE  277 

fascinating  subject  as  an  illustration  of  modern  ef- 
ficiency in  countn'^  life.  Four  years  ago  Assistant 
Secretary  Hays  of  the  Department  of  Agriculture  as- 
serted that  scientific  breeding  of  better  stock  and  plant 
life  was  netting  this  country  a  billion  dollars  a  year, 
of  the  total  agricultural  production  of  seven  and  a 
half  billions  in  1907.*  In  1910  the  total  reached  about 
nine  billions  and  it  is  probable  that  scientific  agricul- 
ture was  the  main  cauee  of  the  great  increase  rather 
than  additional  acreage. 

One  of  the  wonders  of  modern  science  is  this  story  of 
the  development  of  new  plant  species  and  improvement 
in  the  best  of  the  old,  by  the  skillful  processes  of  plant 
breeding.  Notable  also  has  been  the  improvement  in 
American  horses,  cattle,  swine,  and  poultry,  developed 
by  the  same  scientific  principles.  Projected  efficiency, 
or  breeding  power  to  beget  valuable  progeny,  is  the 
central  idea.  Simple  selection  is  the  method.  Out  of 
a  large  number  of  animals  the  phenomenal  individual  is 
selected  for  his  notable  capacity  for  reproducing  in  his 
offspring  his  own  desirable  characteristics.  Thus  the 
best  blood  is  multiplied  and  the  less  desirable  is  dis- 
carded. Sometimes  by  close  inbreeding  the  eugenic 
process  has  been  hastened.  In  this  way  scientific  stock 
raisers  have  been  able  practically  to  make  to  order 
animals  Avith  any  desired  quality.  For  instance,  the 
great  demand  for  bacon  in  England  has  been  met  by  a 
masterly  bit  of  agricultural  statesmanship,  for  whicli 
Mr,  John  Dryden,  chief  of  the  Canadian  Agricultural 
Department,  is  responsible.  After  careful  study  and 
experiment,    the   Yorkshire   and   Tamworth   breeds    of 

*  "Brains  That  Make  Billions,"  W.  M.  Havs,  in  the  SaturJai/  Evenina 
Post,  Aug.   29,    1908 


278  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

hogs  were  crossed  and  a  special  breed  developed 
especially  valuable  for  bacon  with  exceptionally  long 
sides  of  uniform  thickness  and  with  alternating  layers 
of  fat  and  lean.     Selected  bacon  made  to  order ! 

New  breeds  of  sheep  have  been  developed  which  have 
combined  phenomenal  wool-producing  power  with  supe- 
rior meat  production ;  similarly  short-horn  cattle  with 
great  milk-giving  capacity  and  beef  production;  and 
more  remarkable  still  have  been  the  results  in  horse 
breeding.  In  spite  of  all  the  motor-cycles  and  auto- 
mobiles, the  horse  is  becoming  more  and  more  useful, 
because  more  highly  civilized  and  specialized.  The 
breeders  know  how  to  build  up  horse-flesh  to  suit  your 
special  needs  for  draft  horse,  family  horse,  trotter,  or 
pacer,  with  any  desired  form,  proportions,  or  talent, 
almost  as  accurately  as  a  druggist  compounds  prescrip- 
tions !  The  wonderful  possibilities  involved  challenge 
our  imagination.  Among  the  results  of  this  stock- 
raising  strategy  we  ought  to  expect  not  only  happier 
and  richer  farmers,  but  better  and  cheaper  food  and 
clothing  for  all  classes  of  people.  The  very  fact  that 
the  business  is  now  on  a  scientific  basis  has  appealed  to 
students  and  is  attracting  men  of  large  abilities  who 
see  the  opportunity  to  better  rapidly,  year  by  year, 
the  livestock  quality  of  the  whole  country. 

In  the  field  of  plant  breeding  these  marvelous  results 
are  more  rapid  and  startling  because  of  the  wider  range 
of  selection.  Hybridization,  the  crossing  of  different 
species,  has  accomplished  much  more  than  simple  selec- 
tion. Dr.  William  Saunders  of  Canada  succeeded  in 
crossing  the  Ladoga  and  Fife  varieties  of  wheat  and 
secured  a  wheat  which  was  earlier  than  Fife  and  yielded 


SCIENTIFIC  AGRICULTURE  279 

better  than  Ladoga.  Likewise,  Luther  Burbank  was 
able  to  produce  a  hybrid  walnut  by  crossing  the  English 
and  black  walnuts ;  and  Webber  and  Swingle  developed 
the  new  fruits  called  tangerines  and  citranges  by  cross- 
ing sweet  oranges  with  carefully  selected  specimens 
of  the  wild  fruit.  Experiments  last  year  in  blueberry 
culture  developed  luscious  berries  a  half  inch  in 
diameter.  Possibilities  in  berry  development  are  almost 
unlimited,  especially  by  crossing  with  hardy  wild 
varieties. 

Peach  raisers  have  two  great  obstacles  to  sure  suc- 
cess: drought  in  the  Southwest  and  frost  toward  the 
North.  Science  is  helping  them  to  compete  successfully 
with  the  severities  of  Nature.  A  hardy  wild  peach  has 
been  found  in  Northern  China  and  grafting  on  this  stock 
has  produced  the  hardiest  peach  in  Iowa ;  while  another 
strain  bids  fair  to  meet  the  drought-resisting  need?  of 
the  Southwest  fruit  grower. 

Our  agricultural  explorers  are  searching  the  world 
for  new  varieties  which  can  be  used  in  hybridizing  to 
perfect  the  American  species.  For  instance,  a  wild 
wheat  has  been  found  in  Palestine  which  requires  very 
little  water.  So  a  specialist  in  acclimatization  was 
sent  directly  to  the  slopes  of  Mount  Hermon  to  dis- 
cover its  possibilities  for  American  dry  farming.  If  the 
plant  doctors  succeed  in  developing  wheat  which  can  be 
raised  in  our  arid  wilderness,  it  would  repay  a  thousand- 
fold the  expense  of  a  round-the-world  trip.  The  possible 
profits  in  skillful  plant  breeding  are  almost  unlimited. 
Burbank  is  quoted  as  asserting:  "The  right  man 
under  favorable  conditions  can  make  one  dollar  yield  a 
million  dollars  in  plant  breeding."     In  1908  the  Min- 


280  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

nesota  Experiment  Station  had  spent  $40,000  in  breed- 
ing the  cereal  grains.  The  agricultural  department  is 
authority  for  the  opinion  that  "the  increased  produc- 
tion is  estimated  at  a  thousand-fold,  or  $40,000,000." 
The  justly  famous  navel  oranges  of  California  can  all 
be  traced  to  two  scions  sent  from  the  U.  S.  Department 
of  Agriculture  some  years  ago.  The  Wealthy  apple, 
which  thrives  in  the  cold  North  better  than  any  other 
good  variety,  goes  back  to  the  early  struggles  of  Peter 
Gideon  at  Lake  Minnetonka,  who  faced  the  Minnesota 
winter  almost  penniless,  coatless,  and  with  a  family  de- 
pendent upon  him ;  but  had  faith  enough  to  invest  his 
hard-earned  dollars  in  selected  apple-seed  from  his  far 
off  home  in  Maine.  The  largest  single  contributor  to 
the  wealth  produced  by  scientific  breeding  is  said  to  be 
the  Burbank  potato.  The  vanguard  of  American  ex- 
perimenters are  ranging  the  world  and  bring  home 
large-fruited  jujubes  (as  good  as  dates)  from  the  dry 
fields  of  central  Asia ;  seedless  Chinese  persimmons 
which  have  just  been  successfully  fruited  in  North 
Carolina ;  a  Japanese  salad  plant  and  a  vegetable 
called  udo  which  is  similar  to  asparagus ;  edible  roots 
called  aroids  which  thrive  in  swampy  land  where  the 
potato  rots ;  hardy  alfalfa  from  central  Asia  success- 
fully crossed  with  our  own  varieties  for  our  cold 
Northwest ;  drought-resisting  cherries,  apricots  with 
sweet  kernels,  Caucasian  peaches,  olives  hardy  in  zero 
temperatures,  mangoes  from  Porto  Rico,  the  Paradise 
apple  which  grows  wild  in  the  Caucasus,  the  Slew  Abri- 
kose,  an  apricot  as  smooth  as  the  nectarine,  and  wild 
strawberries  fruiting  in  February  on  the  dry  cliffs  of 
western  Asia  which,  through  cross-breeding,  may  help 


SCIENTIFIC  AGRICULTURE  281 

to  carry  our  native  strawberry  many  miles  still  farther 
to  the  north. 

The  story  is  endless ;  but  these  items  suggest  to  us 
the  thoroughly  statesmanlike  way  in  which  our  agricul- 
tural leaders  are  increasing  year  by  year  the  possibil- 
ities of  our  soil  in  spite  of  all  drawbacks  of  conditions 
and  climate.  No  wonder  they  are  already  prophesying 
that  our  annual  agricultural  production  will  before  long 
reach  twenty  billions.  When  it  comes,  a  large  part  of 
the  credit  must  be  given  to  the  skillful  agricultural 
scientists  who  arc  furnishing  all  progressive  farmers 
these  newer  species  of  plants  and  animals  which  are 
superseding  the  inferior  varieties. 

When  it  is  the  problem  of  sterility,  it  is  hopeless. 
But  usually  it  is  merely  the  problem  of  aridity ;  which 
is  only  a  challenge  to  enterprise.  Much  of  our  "Great 
American  Desert,"  as  the  old  geography  used  to  de- 
scribe it,  is  in  reality  the  most  fertile  of  all  soils ;  no 
wonder  it  can  easily  be  made  to  "blossom  as  the  rose." 

Dr.  W.  E.  Smythe  in  his  fascinating  book,  "The 
Conquest  of  Arid  America,"  calls  attention  to  the  fact 
that  the  real  dividing*  line  between  the  East  and  the  West 
is  the  ninety-seventh  meridian  which  divides  in  twain 
the  Dakotas,  NebrasKa,  Kansas,  Oklahoma,  and  Texas. 
East  of  this  line  is  the  region  of  fairly  assured  rainfall. 
To  the  westward  stretches  the  vast  area  of  arid  land 
with  a  rainfall  insufficient  to  sustain  agriculture,  and 
with  only  three  or  four  people  to  the  square  mile, 
though  with  resources  enough  to  support  a  hundred  mil- 
lion people.  With  a  climate  matchless  for  health  and  a 
varied  and  beautiful  scenery,  coupled  with  untold  min- 
eral deposits  and  a  soil  fertility  that  is  remarkable,  this 


282  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

great  section  is  slowly  coming  to  its  own,  through  the 
method  of  irrigation,  from  the  mountains  and  the 
streams. 

With  characteristic  Western  spirit  the  same  author 
remarks,  "Even  in  humid  regions  nothing  is  so  uncer- 
tain as  the  time  and  amount  of  the  rainfall.  In  the 
whole  range  of  modern  industry  nothing  is  so  crude, 
uncalculating,  and  unscientific  as  the  childlike  de- 
pendence on  the  mood  of  the  clouds  for  the  moisture 
essential  to  the  production  of  the  staple  necessities  of 
life."  The  superiority  of  irrigation  as  a  certain  means 
of  water  supply  which  can  be  regulated  at  will  is  a 
thesis  easy  to  maintain.  The  results  make  a  marvelous 
story.  "The  canal  is  an  insurance  policy  against  loss 
of  crops  by  drought,  while  aridity  is  a  substantial 
guarantee  against  injury  by  flood.  The  rich  soils  of 
the  arid  region  produce  from  four  to  ten  times  as 
largely  with  irrigation,  as  the  soil  of  the  humid  region 
without  it.  Twenty  acres  in  the  irrigated  West  should 
equal  100  acres  elsewhere.  Certainty,  abundance, 
variety — all  this  upon  an  area  so  small  as  to  be  within 
the  control  of  a  single  family  through  its  own  area,  are 
the  elements  which  compose  industrial  independence 
under  irrigation." 

The  small  farm  unit,  usually  from  five  to  twenty-five 
acres,  brings  neighbors  close  together,  abolishing 
loneliness  and  most  of  the  social  ills  of  farm  life  in  the 
East.  Beautiful  irrigated  villages  are  springing  up 
which  rival  in  comfort  and  privilege  most  places  on 
earth,  and  combine  both  city  and  country  privileges, 
where  rural  and  urban  meet.  The  spirit  of  cooperation 
is   strong  in   irrigated   communities,  enforced  by  the 


SCIENTIFIC  AGRICULTURE  283 

common  dependence  upon  the  common  enterprise  and 
water  supply.  This  is  well  illustrated  by  the  Mormon 
commonwealth,  the  pioneer  irrigators  of  the  West. 

The  enthusiastic  irrigating  farmer  asserts  that  irri- 
gation is  "the  foundation  of  truly  scientific  agricul- 
ture." "The  Western  farmer  who  has  learned  to  irri- 
gate thinks  it  would  be  quite  as  illogical  for  him  to  leave 
the  watering  of  his  potato  patch  to  the  caprice  of  the 
clouds  as  for  the  housewife  to  defer  her  washday  until 
she  could  catch  rainwater  in  her  tubs."  Irrigation 
certainly  furnishes  the  ideal  method  of  raising  a  varied 
crop,  giving  each  crop  individual  treatment,  serving 
each  of  thirty  varieties  of  plants  and  trees  with  just 
the  amount  of  daily  moisture  they  individually  need,  so 
as  to  produce  maximum  products.  No  wonder  three 
crops  in  a  year  sometimes  result,  and  sometimes  five 
crops  of  alfalfa  in  the  Southwest.  Here  we  come  to  the 
highest  development  of  intensive  farming  where  the 
utmost  value  of  agricultural  science  has  free  play  and 
rivals  the  results  of  research  and  skill  in  any  other  line 
of  human  effort. 

Wonderful  as  these  irrigation  projects  are,  we  must 
not  fail  to  notice  that  this  method  of  reclaiming  arid 
lands  can  only  be  used  where  there  are  mountains, 
rivers,  or  water  courses  which  can  be  tapped.  Ulti- 
mately an  area  as  large  as  New  England  and  New  York 
State  will  probably  be  blessed  by  irrigation.  But  this 
is  only  a  small  fraction  of  the  arid  West.  How  shall  the 
rest  be  reclaimed  from  the  desert?  Obviously  by  some 
method  of  dry  farming,  depending  on  and  conserving 
the  meager  rain-fall. 

A  few  simple  principles  have  been  discovered,  and 


284  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

some  specialized  machinery  developed,  by  which  suc- 
cessful dry  farming  is  now  conducted  on  an  extensive 
scale  along  the  arid  plains  between  the  Missouri  River 
basin  and  the  Sierra  Nevada  Mountains.  In  brief, 
these  principles  are:  deep  plowing,  sub-soil  packing, 
intensive  cultivation,  maintaining  a  fine  dust  mulch  on 
the  surface,  the  use  of  drought-resisting  grains,  espe- 
cially certain  varieties  of  wheat,  allowing  the  land  to 
lie  fallow  every  other  year  to  store  moisture,  and  keep- 
ing a  good  per  cent,  of  humus  (vegetable  matter)  in  the 
soil  to  resist  evaporation.  In  every  possible  way  the 
dry  farmer  conserves  moisture.  The  dry  mulch  is  par- 
ticularl}'^  effective.  Only  a  few  years  ago  it  was  dis- 
covered that  by  capillary  attraction  much  of  the  water 
absorbed  by  the  spongy  soil  during  a  rain  is  lost  by 
rapid  evaporation,  coming  to  the  surface,  just  as  oil 
runs  up  a  wick.  But  by  stirring  the  surface  the 
"capillary  ducts"  are  broken  up  and  the  moisture  tends 
to  stay  down  in  the  sub-soil ;  for  the  two  inches  of  dust 
mulch  on  the  surface  acts  like  a  blanket,  protecting  the 
precious  moisture  from  the  dry  winds. 

In  such  brief  treatment  it  is  not  to  be  expected  that 
the  writer  could  do  justice  to  the  subject  of  modern 
agriculture.  In  fact,  there  has  been  little  reference  to 
the  topic  of  general  farming.  In  its  main  outline  it  is 
a  familiar  topic  and  requires  little  attention  here.  The 
descriptions  of  certain  varieties  of  specialized  agricul- 
ture have  been  given  as  illustrations  of  the  more  re- 
markable phases  of  the  application  of  scientific  methods 
to  country  life.  We  hope  two  results  have  thus  been 
attained,  that  the  dignity  and  efficiency  and  scientific 
possibilities  of  modern  agriculture  as  a  profession  have 


SCIENTIFIC  AGRICULTURE  285 

been  brought  to  the  attention  both  of  our  readers  in 
the  city  and  of  the  discontented  farm  boys  in  the 
countr}'.  Both  need  a  higher  appreciation  of  country 
life. 

It  sliould  be  evident  to  all  that  agriculture  to-day  is 
thoroughly  scientific  when  rightly  practised,  which  is 
simply  saying  that  the  practice  of  the  new  agriculture 
is  a  profession.  It  is  among  the  most  difficult  and 
highly  technical  of  all  professions.  No  profession,  with 
the  possible  exception  of  medicine,  has  a  broader  scien- 
tific basis  or  is  at  present  deriving  a  greater  benefit 
from  vast  inductive  work  in  world-wide  experimentation 
at  both  public  and  private  expense.  This  profession 
has  made  wonderful  gains  in  recent  years  in  both  ex- 
tensive and  intensive  efficiency,  and  has  written  among 
its  triumphs  many  of  the  most  romantic  stories  of  mod- 
ern mechanical  skill,  inventive  genius,  economic  profit, 
and  scientific  achievement. 

This  honorable  profession  is  not  only  worthy  of  the 
finest  and  ablest  of  our  American  young  manhood,  but 
its  opportunity  and  present  need  is  a  distinct  challenge 
to  their  attention.  Mr.  James  J.  Hill  recently  stated 
as  his  opinion  that  not  more  than  one  per  cent,  of 
American  farmers  in  the  Middle  West  were  keeping  in 
touch  with  the  agricultural  institutions ;  which  is  the 
same  as  saying  they  are  not  keeping  up  to  date.  This 
suggests  the  need  of  more  intelligent  modern  farmers 
tilling  the  soil  as  a  profession  and  thus  pointing  the 
way  to  progress  for  all  their  neighbors. 

This  word  conservation  has  but  recently  won  its 
place  of  honor  in  our  popular  speech ;  but  it  is  a  word 
of  mighty  import.     The  battle  for  conservation  of  our 


286  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

national  resources  is  on,  and  it  challenges  the  attention 
of  our  young  coUegians. 

It  is  encouraging  to  see  results  already.  By  a  happy 
combination  of  progressiveness  with  true  conservatism, 
we  are  conserving  our  national  assets  from  Niagara  to 
the  mighty  forests  of  Washington  and  California  and 
from  the  arid  lands  of  the  mighty  empire  of  Montana 
to  the  swamps  of  Florida.  The  nation  is  repenting  of 
its  prodigal  wastefulness  and  is  now  guarding  jealously 
its  forest  reserves,  its  vast  water-power  privileges,  its 
coal  and  mineral  deposits,  and  its  soil  fertility,  for 
upon  these  stores  of  fundamental  wealth  depends  the 
prosperity  of  endless  generations.  Many  alluring 
chances  will  come  to  men  now  in  college  to  share  in  this 
great  task  of  the  nation,  this  fascinating  enterprise  of 
conservation. 

Any  reader  must  be  quite  lacking  in  vision  who  has 
been  able  to  read  the  remarkable  progress  of  modern 
agricultural  science  without  discerning  the  deep  re- 
ligious significance  of  it  all.  Civilization  unquestion- 
ably is  based  on  economics.  Rural  prosperity  is  a 
primary  condition  of  rural  permanence.  Farming  must 
be  profitable  enough  to  maintain  a  self-respecting  rural 
folk ;  or  the  open  country  would  be  speedily  abandoned 
to  a  race  of  peasants  and  rural  heathenism  would  be 
imminent. 

Progress  in  agriculture,  developing  rural  prosperity, 
means  the  survival  of  the  best  rural  homes  and  the 
finest  rural  ideals, — otherwise  these  would  go  to  the 
city.  Retaining  in  the  country  a  genuine  Christian  con- 
stituency and  rural  leadership  means  the  survival  of  the 
country  church.     The  Christian  forces  in  the  country 


SCIENTIFIC  AGRICULTURE  287 

have  a  vast  stake  in  rural  prosperity.  You  cannot  hope 
to  build  a  prosperous  country  church  on  poor  soil  or 
maintain  it  on  bad  farming.  This  is  not  a  mere  matter 
of  scarcity  of  contributions.  It  is  a  result  of  the  pov- 
erty of  personality  among  people  who  are  poor  Chris- 
tians because  they  are  poor  farmers. 

Christian  leaders  should  therefore  rejoice  in  the 
advance  of  modern  agriculture  not  only  because  it  all 
signifies  a  richer  and  broader  rural  prosperity,  but  also 
because  it  makes  possible  the  permanence  of  rural 
Christendom  and  the  survival  of  successful  country 
churches.  The  more  profitable  modern  farming  is  made, 
the  richer  becomes  the  opportunity  of  country  life,  the 
larger  proportion  of  the  brightest  sons  and  daughters 
of  the  farm  will  resist  the  lure  of  the  city.  Nothing  is 
so  vital  to  the  country  church,  humanly  speaking,  as  to 
keep  in  the  country  parishes  a  fair  share  of  the  country 
boys  and  girls  of  the  finest  type.  With  them  it  lives  and 
serves  its  community.  Without  them  it  will  die  and  its 
community  will  become  decadent. 

It  is  no  selfish  Christian  spirit  that  rejoices  in  the 
broadening  opportunities  of  country  life.  The  church 
is  but  a  means  to  an  end.  The  great  objective  is  the 
coming  of  the  Kingdom  of  God  for  which  Jesus  prayed. 
As  fast  as  the  very  soil  of  a  country  is  recognized  as 
"holy  land,"  and  preserving  its  fertility  is  felt  to  be  a 
patriotic  duty ;  as  fast  as  better  live  stock,  better  plant 
species,  and  a  better  breed  of  men  are  sought  as  a 
working  ideal ;  as  fast  as  the  conservation  of  all  natural 
resources  becomes  a  national  life  purpose;  so  rapidly 
and  inevitably  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  will  come.  The 
Country  Life  Movement  is  fundamentally  religious. 


XXI 

ON  THE  PHYSICAL  BASIS  OF  LIFE 
Thomas  Henry  Huxley 

In  order  to  make  the  title  of  this  discourse  generally 
intelligible,  I  have  translated  the  term  "Protoplasm," 
which  is  the  scientific  name  of  the  substance  of  which  I 
am  about  to  speak,  by  the  words  "the  physical  basis  of 
life."  I  suppose  that,  to  many,  the  idea  that  there  is 
such  a  thing  as  a  physical  basis,  or  matter,  of  life  may 
be  novel — so  widely  spread  is  the  conception  of  life  as  a 
something  which  works  through  matter,  but  is  inde- 
pendent of  it :  and  even  those  who  are  aware  that  matter 
and  life  are  inseparably  connected,  may  not  be  pre- 
pared for  the  conclusion  plainly  suggested  by  the 
phrase,  "the  physical  basis  or  matter  of  life,"  that  there 
is  some  one  kind  of  matter  which  is  common  to  all  living 
beings,  and  that  their  endless  diversities  are  bound  to- 
gether by  a  physical,  as  well  as  an  ideal,  unity.  In 
fact,  when  first  apprehended,  such  a  doctrine  as  this 
appears  almost  shocking  to  common  sense. 

What,  truly,  can  seem  to  be  more  obviously  different 
from  one  another,  in  faculty,  in  form,  and  in  substance, 
than  the  various  kinds  of  living  beings?  What  com- 
munity of  faculty  can  there  be  between  the  brightly 
colored  lichen,  which  so  nearly  resembles  a  mere  min- 

288 


ON  THE  PHYSICAL  BASIS  OF  LIFE     289 

eral  incrustation  of  the  bare  rock  on  which  it  grows, 
and  the  painter  to  whom  it  is  instinct  with  beauty,  or 
the  botanist,  whom  it  feeds  with  knowledge? 

Again,  think  of  the  microscopic  fungus — a  mere 
infinitesimal  ovoid  particle,  which  finds  space  and 
duration  enough  to  multiply  into  countless  millions  in 
the  body  of  a  living  fly ;  and  then  of  the  wealth  of 
foliage,  the  luxuriance  of  flower  and  fruit,  which  lies 
between  this  bald  sketch  of  a  plant  and  the  giant  pine 
of  California,  towering  to  the  dimensions  of  a  cathedral 
spire,  or  the  Indian  fig,  which  covers  acres  with  its  pro- 
found shadow,  and  endures  while  nations  and  empires 
come  and  go  around  its  vast  circumference.  Or,  turn- 
ing to  the  other  half  of  the  world  of  life,  picture  to 
yourself  the  great  Finner  whale,  hugest  of  beasts  that 
live,  or  have  lived,  disporting  his  eighty  or  ninety  feet 
of  bone,  muscle,  and  blubber,  with  easy  roll,  among 
waves  in  which  the  stoutest  ship  that  ever  left  dockyard 
would  flounder  hopelessly ;  and  contrast  him  with  the 
invisible  animalcules — mere  gelatinous  specks,  multi- 
tudes of  which  could,  in  fact,  dance  upon  the  point  of  a 
needle  with  the  same  ease  as  the  angles  of  the  schoolmen 
could,  in  imagination.  With  these  images  before  your 
minds,  you  may  well  ask,  what  community  of  forms,  or 
structure,  is  there  between  the  animalcule  and  the 
whale;  or  between  the  fungus  and  the  fig-tree?  And, 
a  fortiori,  between  all  four? 

Finally,  if  we  regard  substance,  or  material  com- 
position, what  hidden  bond  can  connect  the  flower  which 
a  girl  wears  in  her  hair  and  the  blood  which  courses 
through  her  youthful  veins  ;  or,  what  is  there  in  common 
between  the  dense  and  resisting  mass  of  the  oak,  or  the 


290  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

strong  fabric  of  the  tortoise,  and  those  broad  disks  of 
glassy  jelly  which  may  be  seen  pulsating  through  the 
waters  of  a  calm  sea,  but  which  drain  away  to  mere 
films  in  the  hand  which  raises  them  out  of  their 
element? 

Such  objections  as  these  must,  I  think,  arise  in  the 
mind  of  every  one  who  ponders,  for  the  first  time,  upon 
the  conception  of  a  single  physical  basis  of  life  under- 
lying all  the  diversities  of  vital  existence ;  but  I  propose 
to  demonstrate  to  you  that,  notwithstanding  these  ap- 
parent difficulties,  a  threefold  unity — namely,  a  unity 
of  power  or  faculty,  a  unity  of  form,  and  a  unity  of 
substantial  composition — does  provide  the  whole  living 
world. 

No  very  abstruse  argumentation  is  needed,  in  the 
first  place,  to  prove  that  the  powers,  or  faculties,  of  all 
kinds  of  living  matter,  diverse  as  they  may  be  in  degree, 
are  substantially  similar  in  kind. 

Goethe  has  condensed  a  survey  of  all  powers  of  man- 
kind into  the  well-known  epigram : 

Warum   treibt   sich    das    Volk   so    und    schreit?      Es   will    sich 
ernahren.      Kinder    zeugen   und    die    nahren,    so    gut   es   vermag. 
•  *  ♦  • 

Welter  bringt  es  kein  Mensch,  stell'  er  sich,  wie  er  auch  wall.* 

In  physiological  language  this  means,  that  all  the 
multifarious  and  complicated  activities  of  man  are 
comprehensible  under  three  categories.  Either  they  are 
immediately  directed  toward  the  maintenance  and  de- 
velopment of  the  body,  or  they  effect  transitory  changes 
in  the  relative  positions  of  parts  of  the  body,  or  they 
tend  toward  the  continuance  of  the  species.   Even  those 

*  Why  do  people  stxnggle  so  and  clamor  ?  They  wish  to  maintain  them- 
selves, to  bring  forth  children,  and  nourish  them  as  well  as  they  can.  .  .  • 
Pnrther  than  this  no  man  attains,  strive  how  he  may. 


ON  THE  PHYSICAL  BASIS  OF  LIFE     291 

manifestations  of  intellect,  of  feeling,  and  of  will, 
which  we  rightly  name  the  higher  faculties,  are  not  ex- 
cluded from  this  classification,  inasmuch  as  to  every  one 
but  the  subject  of  them,  they  are  known  only  as  transi- 
tory changes  in  the  relative  positions  of  parts  of  the 
body.  Speech,  gesture,  and  every  other  form  of  human 
action  are,  in  the  long  run,  resolvable  into  muscular 
contraction,  and  muscular  contraction  is  but  a  transi- 
tory change  in  the  relative  positions  of  the  parts  of  a 
muscle.  But  the  scheme  which  is  large  enough  to  em- 
brace the  activities  of  the  highest  form  of  life,  covers  all 
those  of  the  lower  creatures.  The  lowest  plant,  or 
animalcule,  feeds,  grows,  and  reproduces  its  kind.  In 
addition,  all  animals  manifest  those  transitory  changes 
of  form  which  we  class  under  irritability  and  contrac- 
tility ;  and,  it  is  more  than  probable,  that  when  the 
vegetable  world  is  thoroughly  explored,  we  shall  find 
all  plants  in  possession  of  the  same  powers,  at  one  time 
or  other  of  their  existence. 

I  am  not  now  alluding  to  such  phenomena,  at  once 
rare  and  conspicuous,  as  those  exhibited  by  the  leaflets 
of  the  sensitive  plants,  or  the  stamens  of  the  barberry, 
but  to  much  more  widely  spread,  and,  at  the  same  time, 
more  subtle  and  hidden,  manifestations  of  vegetable 
contractility.  You  are  doubtless  aware  that  the  com- 
mon nettle  owes  its  stinging  property  to  the  innumer- 
able stiff  and  needlelike,  though  exquisitely  delicate, 
hairs  which  cover  its  surface.  Each  stinging-needle 
tapers  from  a  broad  base  to  a  slender  summit,  which, 
though  rounded  at  the  end,  is  of  such  microscopic  fine- 
ness that  it  readily  penetrates,  and  breaks  off  in  the 
skin.     The  whole  hair  consists  of  a  very  delicate  outer 


292  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

case  of  wood,  closely  applied  to  the  inner  surface  of 
which  is  a  layer  of  semi-fluid  matter,  full  of  innumerable 
granules  of  extreme  minuteness.  This  semi-fluid  lining 
is  protoplasm,  which  thus  constitutes  a  kind  of  bag, 
full  of  limpid  liquid,  and  roughly  corresponding  in  form 
with  the  interior  of  the  hair  which  it  fills.  When  viewed 
with  a  sufficiently  high  magnifying  power,  the  proto- 
plasmic layer  of  the  nettle  hair  is  seen  to  be  in  a  con- 
dition of  unceasing  activity.  Local  contractions  of  the 
whole  thickness  of  its  substance  pass  slowly  and 
gradually  from  point  to  point,  and  give  rise  to  the 
appearance  of  progressive  waves,  just  as  the  bending  of 
successive  stalks  of  corn  by  a  breeze  produces  the  ap- 
parent billows  of  a  cornfield. 

But  in  addition  to  these  movements,  and  indepen- 
dently of  them,  the  gi-anules  are  driven,  in  relatively 
rapid  streams,  through  channels  in  the  protoplasm 
which  seems  to  have  a  considerable  amount  of  persis- 
tence. Most  commonly,  the  currents  in  adjacent  parts 
of  the  protoplasm  take  similar  directions;  and,  thus, 
there  is  a  general  stream  up  one  side  of  the  hair  and 
down  the  other.  But  this  does  not  prevent  the  existence 
of  partial  currents  which  take  difi'erent  routes ;  and 
sometimes  trains  of  granules  may  be  seen  coursing 
swiftly  in  opposite  directions  within  a  twenty-thou- 
sandth of  an  inch  of  one  another ;  while,  occasionally, 
opposite  streams  come  into  direct  collision,  and  after  a 
longer  or  shorter  struggle,  one  predominates.  The 
cause  of  these  currents  seems  to  lie  in  contractions  of 
the  protoplasm  which  bounds  the  channels  in  which  they 
flow,  but  which  are  so  minute  that  the  best  microscopes 
show  only  their  efi*ect,  and  not  themselves. 


ON  THE  PHYSICAL  BASIS  OF  LIFE     29,'? 

The  spectacle  afforded  by  the  wonderful  energies 
prisoned  within  the  compass  of  the  microscopic  hair  of 
a  plant,  which  we  commonly  regard  as  a  merely  passive 
organism,  is  not  easily  forgotten  by  one  who  has 
watched  its  display,  continued  hour  after  hour,  without 
pause  or  sign  of  weakening.  The  possible  complexity 
of  many  other  organic  forms,  seemingly  as  simple  as 
the  protoplasm  of  the  nettle,  dawns  upon  one;  and  the 
comparison  of  such  a  protoplasm  to  a  body  with  an 
internal  circulation,  which  has  been  put  forward  by  an 
eminent  physiologist,  loses  much  of  its  startling  charac- 
ter. Currents  similar  to  those  of  the  hairs  of  the  nettle 
have  been  observed  in  a  great  multitude  of  very  dif- 
ferent plants,  and  weighty  authorities  have  suggested 
that  they  probably  occur,  in  more  or  less  perfection,  in 
all  young  vegetable  cells.  If  such  be  the  case,  the 
wonderful  noon-day  silence  of  a  tropical  forest  is,  after 
all,  due  only  to  the  dulness  of  our  hearing;  and  could 
our  ears  catch  the  murmurs  of  these  tiny  Maelstroms, 
as  they  whirl  in  the  innumerable  myriads  of  living  cells 
which  constitute  each  tree,  we  should  be  stunned,  as  with 
the  roar  of  a  great  city. 

Among  the  lower  plants,  it  is  the  rule  rather  than  the 
exception,  that  contractility  should  be  still  more  openly 
manifested  at  some  periods  of  their  existence.  The 
protoplasm  of  Algce  and  Fungi  becomes,  under  many 
circumstances,  partially,  or  completely,  freed  from  its 
woody  case,  and  exhibits  movements  of  its  whole  mass, 
or  is  propelled  by  the  contractility  of  one,  or  more, 
hair-like  prolongations  of  its  body,  which  are  called 
vibratile  cilia.  And,  so  far  as  the  conditions  of  the 
manifestations  of  the  phenomena  of  contractility  have 


294  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

yet  been  studied,  they  are  the  same  for  the  plant  as  for 
the  animal.  Heat  and  electric  shocks  influence  both, 
and  in  the  same  way,  though  it  may  be  in  different  de- 
grees. It  is  by  no  means  my  intention  to  suggest  that 
there  is  no  difference  in  faculty  between  the  lowest 
plant  and  the  highest,  or  between  plants  and  animals. 
But  the  difference  between  the  powers  of  the  lowest 
plant,  or  animal,  and  those  of  the  highest,  is  one  of 
degree,  not  of  kind,  and  depends,  as  Milne-Edwards 
long  ago  so  well  pointed  out,  upon  the  extent  to  which 
the  principles  of  the  division  of  labor  is  carried  out  in 
the  living  economy.  In  the  lowest  organism  all  parts 
are  competent  to  perform  all  functions,  and  one  and 
the  same  portion  of  protoplasm  may  successfully  take 
on  the  function  of  feeding,  moving,  or  reproducing  ap- 
paratus. In  the  highest,  on  the  contrary,  a  great 
number  of  parts  combine  to  perform  each  function,  each 
part  doing  its  allotted  share  of  the  work  with  greater 
accuracy  and  efficiency,  but  being  useless  for  any  other 
purpose. 

On  the  other  hand,  notwithstanding  all  the  funda- 
mental resemblances  which  exist  between  the  powers  of 
the  protoplasm  in  plants  and  in  animals,  they  present  a 
striking  difference  (to  which  I  shall  advert  more  at 
length  presently),  in  the  fact  that  plants  can  manu- 
facture fresh  protoplasm  out  of  mineral  compounds, 
whereas  animals  are  obliged  to  procure  it  ready-made, 
and  hence,  in  the  long  run,  depend  upon  plants.  Upon 
what  condition  this  difference  in  the  powers  of  the  two 
great  divisions  of  the  world  of  life  depends,  nothing  is 
at  present  known. 

With   such  qualifications   as   arise   out   of  the  last- 


ON  THE  PHYSICAL  BASIS  OF  LIFE    295 

mentioned  fact,  it  may  be  truly  said  that  the  acts  of  all 
living  things  are  fundamentally  one.  Is  any  such  unity 
prcdicable  of  their  forms  ?  Let  us  seek  in  easily  verified 
facts  for  a  reply  to  this  question.  If  a  drop  of  blood 
be  drawn  by  pricking  one's  finger,  and  viewed  with 
proper  precautions,  and  under  a  sufficiently  high  micro- 
scopic power,  there  will  be  seen,  among  the  innumerable 
multitude  of  little,  circular,  discoidal  bodies,  or  corpus- 
cles, which  float  in  it  and  give  it  color,  a  comparatively 
small  number  of  colorless  corpuscles,  of  somewhat 
larger  size  and  very  irregular  shape.  If  the  drop  of 
blood  be  kept  at  the  temperature  of  the  body  these 
colorless  corpuscles  will  be  seen  to  exhibit  a  marvelous 
activity,  changing  their  forms  with  great  rapidity, 
drawing  in  and  thrusting  cut  prolongations  of  their 
substance,  and  creeping  about  as  if  they  were  inde- 
pendent organisms. 

The  substance  which  is  thus  active  is  a  mass  of  proto- 
plasm, and  its  activity  differs  in  detail,  rather  than  in 
principle,  from  that  of  the  protoplasm  of  the  nettle. 
Under  sundry  circumstances  the  corpuscle  dies  and  be- 
comes distended  into  a  round  mass,  in  the  midst  of  which 
is  seen  a  smaller  spherical  body,  which  existed,  but  was 
more  or  less  hidden,  in  the  living  corpuscle,  and  is  called 
its  nucleus.  Corpuscles  of  essentially  similar  structure 
are  to  be  found  in  the  skin,  in  the  lining  of  the  mouth, 
and  scattered  through  the  whole  framework  of  the 
body. 

Nay,  more;  in  the  earliest  condition  of  the  human 
organism,  in  that  state  in  which  it  has  but  just  become 
distinguishable  from  the  egg  in  which  it  arises,  it  is 
nothing  but  an  aggregation  of  such  corpuscles,  and 


296  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

every  organ  of  the  body  was,  once,  no  more  than  such 
an  aggregation. 

Thus  a  nucleated  mass  of  protoplasm  turns  out  to 
be  what  may  be  termed  the  structural  unit  of  the  human 
body.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  body,  in  its  earliest 
state,  is  a  mere  multiple  of  such  units ;  and  in  its  per- 
fect condition,  it  is  a  multiple  of  such  units  variously 
modified. 

But  does  the  formula  which  expresses  the  essential 
structural  character  of  the  highest  animal  cover  all  the 
rest,  as  the  statement  of  its  powers  and  faculties  cov- 
ered all  the  others.?  Very  nearly.  Beast  and  fowl, 
reptile  and  fish,  mollusk,  worm,  and  polype,  are  all  com- 
posed of  structural  units  of  the  same  character,  namely, 
masses  of  protoplasm  with  a  nucleus.  There  are  sundry 
very  low  animals,  each  of  which,  structurally,  is  a  mere 
colorless  blood-corpuscle,  leading  an  independent  life. 
But,  at  the  very  bottom  of  the  animal  scale,  even  this 
simplicity  becomes  simplified,  and  all  the  phenomena 
of  life  are  manifested  by  a  particle  of  protoplasm  with- 
out a  nucleus.  Nor  are  such  organisms  insignificant 
by  reason  of  their  want  of  complexity.  It  is  a  fair 
question  whether  the  protoplasm  of  those  simplest 
forms  of  life,  which  people  an  immense  extent  of  the 
bottom  of  the  sea,  would  not  outweigh  that  of  all  the 
higher  living  beings,  which  inhabit  the  land  put  to- 
gether. And  in  ancient  times,  no  less  than  at  the  pres- 
ent day,  such  living  beings  as  these  have  been  the  great- 
est of  rock  builders. 

What  has  been  said  of  the  animal  world  is  no  less 
true  of  plants.  Embedded  in  the  protoplasm  at  the 
broad,  or  attached,  end  of  the  nettle  hair,  there  lies  a 


ON  THE  PHYSICAL  BASIS  OF  LIFE    297 

spheroidal  nucleus.  Careful  examination  further  proves 
that  the  whole  substance  of  the  nettle  is  made  up  of  a 
repetition  of  such  masses  of  nucleated  protoplasm,  each 
contained  in  a  wooden  case,  which  is  modified  in  form, 
sometimes  into  a  woody  fibre,  sometimes  into  a  duct  or 
spiral  vessel,  sometimes  into  a  pollen  grain,  or  an  ovule. 
Traced  back  to  its  earliest  state,  the  nettle  arises  as  the 
man  does,  in  a  particle  of  nucleated  protoplasm.  And 
in  the  lowest  plants,  as  in  the  lowest  animals,  a  single 
mass  of  such  protoplasm  may  constitute  the  whole 
plant,  or  the  protoplasm  may  exist  without  a  nucleus. 

Under  these  circumstances  it  may  well  be  asked,  how 
is  one  mass  of  non-nucleated  protoplasm  to  be  dis- 
tinguished from  another?  Why  call  one  "plant"  and 
the  other  "animal"? 

The  only  reply  is  that,  so  far  as  form  is  concerned, 
plants  and  animals  are  not  separable,  and  that,  in  many 
cases,  it  is  a  mere  matter  of  convention  whether  we  call 
a  given  organism  an  animal  or  a  plant.  There  is  a 
living  body  called  Mthalmm  septicum,  which  appears 
upon  decaying  vegetable  substances,  and  in  one  of  its 
forms  is  common  upon  the  surfaces  of  tan-pits.  In  this 
condition  it  is,  to  all  intents  and  purposes,  a  fungus, 
and  formerly  was  always  regarded  as  such ;  but  the 
remarkable  investigations  of  De  Bary  have  shown  that, 
in  another  condition,  the  Mtlialium  is  an  actively  loco- 
motive creature,  and  takes  in  solid  matters,  upon  which 
apparently,  it  feeds,  thus  exhibiting  the  most  charac- 
teristic feature  of  animality.  Is  this  a  plant;  or  is  it 
an  animal?  Is  it  both ;  or  is  it  neither?  Some  decide  in 
favor  of  the  last  supposition,  and  establish  an  inter- 
mediate kingdom,  a  sort  of  biological  No  Man's  Land 


298  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

for  all  these  questionable  forms.  But,  as  it  is  ad- 
mittedly impossible  to  draw  any  distinct  boundary  line 
between  this  no  man's  land  and  the  vegetable  world  on 
the  one  hand,  or  the  animal,  on  the  other,  it  appears  to 
me  that  this  proceeding  merely  doubles  the  difficulty 
which,  before,  was  single. 

Protoplasm,  simple  or  nucleated,  is  the  formal  basis 
of  all  life.  It  is  the  clay  of  the  potter:  which,  bake  it 
and  paint  it  as  he  will,  remains  clay,  separated  by 
artifice,  and  not  by  nature,  from  the  commonest  brick 
or  sun-dried  clod. 

Thus  it  becomes  clear  that  all  living  powers  are 
cognate,  and  that  all  living  forms  are  fundamentally  of 
one  character.  The  researches  of  the  chemist  have  re- 
vealed a  no  less  striking  uniformity  of  material  com- 
position in  living  matter. 

In  perfect  strictness,  it  is  true  that  chemical  investi- 
gation can  tell  us  little  or  nothing,  directly,  of  the  com- 
position of  living  matter,  inasmuch  as  such  matter  must 
needs  die  in  the  act  of  analysis, — and  upon  this  very 
obvious  ground,  objections,  which  I  confess  seem  to  me 
to  be  somewhat  frivolous,  have  been  raised  to  the  draw- 
ing of  any  conclusions  whatever  respecting  the  com- 
position of  actually  living  matter,  from  that  of  the 
dead  matter  of  life,  which  alone  is  accessible  to  us.  But 
objectors  of  this  class  do  not  seem  to  reflect  that  it  is 
also,  in  strictness,  true  that  we  know  nothing  about  the 
composition  of  any  body  whatever,  as  it  is.  The  state- 
ment that  a  crystal  of  calc-spar  consists  of  carbonate 
of  lime  is  quite  true,  if  we  only  mean  that,  by  appropri- 
ate processes,  it  may  be  resolved  into  carbonic  acid  and 
quicklime.     If  you  pass  the  same  carbonic  acid  over  the 


ON  THE  PHYSICAL  BASIS  OF  LIFE    299 

very  quicklime  thus  obtained,  you  will  obtain  carbonate 
of  lime  again ;  but  it  will  not  be  calc-spar,  nor  anything 
like  it.  Can  it,  therefore,  be  said  that  chemical  analysis 
teaches  nothing  about  the  chemical  composition  of  calc- 
spar?  Such  a  statement  would  be  absurd;  but  it  is 
hardly  more  so  than  the  talk  one  occasionally  hears 
about  the  uselessness  of  applying  the  results  of  chemical 
analysis  to  the  living  bodies  which  have  yielded  them. 

One  fact,  at  any  rate,  is  out  of  reach  of  such  refine- 
ments, and  this  is,  that  all  the  forms  of  protoplasm 
which  have  yet  been  examined  contain  the  four  elements, 
carbon,  hydrogen,  oxygen,  and  nitrogen,  in  very  com- 
plex union,  and  that  they  behave  similarly  toward  sev- 
eral reagents.  To  this  complex  combination,  the  nature 
of  which  has  never  been  determined  with  exactness,  the 
name  of  protein  has  been  applied.  And  if  we  use  this 
term  with  such  caution  as  may  properly  arise  out  of 
our  comparative  ignorance  of  the  things  for  which  it 
stands,  it  may  be  truly  said  that  all  protoplasm  is  pro- 
teinaceous,  or,  as  the  white,  or  albumen,  of  an  egg  is 
one  of  the  commonest  examples  of  a  nearly  pure  pro- 
tein matter,  we  may  say  that  all  living  matter  is  more 
or  less  albuminoid. 

Perhaps  it  would  not  yet  be  safe  to  say  that  all  forms 
of  protoplasm  are  affected  by  the  direct  action  of  elec- 
tric shocks ;  and  yet  the  number  of  cases  in  which  the 
contraction  of  protoplasm  is  shown  to  be  affected  by 
this  agency  increases  every  day. 

Nor  can  it  be  affirmed  with  perfect  confidence  that  all 
forms  of  protoplasm  are  liable  to  undergo  that  peculiar 
coagulation  at  a  temperature  of  49°-50°  centigrade, 
which  has  been  called  "heat-stiffening,"  though  Kiihne's 


300  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

beautiful  researches  have  proved  this  occurrence  to 
take  place  in  so  many  and  such  diverse  living  beings, 
that  it  is  hardly  rash  to  expect  that  the  law  holds  good 
for  all. 

Enough  lias  perhaps  been  said  to  prove  the  existence 
of  a  general  uniformity  in  the  character  of  the  proto- 
plasm, or  physical  basis  of  life,  in  whatever  group  of 
living  beings  it  may  be  studied.  But  it  will  be  under- 
stood that  this  general  uniformity  by  no  means  excludes 
any  amount  of  special  modifications  of  the  fundamental 
substance.  The  mineral,  carbonate  of  lime,  assumes  an 
immense  diversity  of  characters,  though  no  one  doubts 
that,  under  all  the  Protean  changes,  it  Is  one  and  tlie 
same  thing. 


XXII 

NEW  PLANT  IMMIGRANTS  * 

David  Fairchild 

To  readers  of  the  National  Geographic  Magazine 
who  have  wandered  with  men  of  many  tastes  all  over  the 
world,  the  thought  must  often  have  come,  "Of  what  use 
are  all  the  strange  plants  which  make  up  the  landscapes 
of  the  pictures?"  The  globe,  with  its  kaleidoscopic 
panorama  of  people,  animals,  and  plants,  has  been 
whirled  before  you,  as  it  were,  and  you  have  in  your 
minds  the  picture  of  a  ball  circling  through  space, 
covered  with  a  film  of  plants,  animals,  and  men  in  con- 
stant change.  So  varied  is  this  film  of  plants  that  there 
are  probably  half  a  million  distinct,  specific  forms  in 
it,  and  yet  man  uses  only  a  few  hundred  for  his  own 
purposes. 

To  change,  in  a  measure,  the  distribution  of  the 
really  useful  plants  of  the  world  is  what  the  office  of 
Foreign  Seed  and  Plant  Introduction  of  the  Depart- 
ment of  Agriculture  is  trj^ing  to  do.  The  motive  under- 
lying this  work  might  be  called  the  ambition  to  make 
the  world  more  habitable.  If  one  is  inclined  to  be  pessi- 
mistic with  regard  to  the  food  supply  of  the  world,  he 
has  only  to  talk  to  any  one  of  the  enthusiasts  of  the 
Department  of  Agriculture  to  get  a  picture  of  the 
widening  vista  of  agricultural  possibilities  which  would 

*  From  the  National  Geographic  Magazine.  Copyright,  1911.  By  per- 
misEJon  of  the  author  and  the  publishers. 

."01 


302  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

make  him  realize  that  the  food  problems  of  the  race  arc- 
not  hung  in  the  balance  of  our  Great  Plains  area,  and 
that  the  food-producing  power  of  the  world  is  still  prac- 
tically unknown,  because  we  have  just  begun  to  study,  in 
a  modern  way,  the  relative  performance  of  different 
plants. 

We  may  not  always  grow  the  plants  we  do  now. 
iSome  of  them  are  expensive  food  producers,  some  pro- 
duce foods  that  are  difficult  to  digest,  and  some  we  may 
leave  behind  as  we  learn  to  like  others  better. 

What  to  grow  was  not  so  serious  a  question  to  the 
early  Phoenician  peasant,  who  knew  perhaps  a  dozen 
crops,  as  it  is  becoming  to  the  American  agriculturist, 
who  can  pick  from  the  crops  of  all  the  world  the  one 
best  suited  to  his  land  and  climate.  Changes  come  so 
rapidly  nowadays  that  if  a  man  to-day  talks  of  "pears" 
he  may  mean  what  are  ordinarily  thought  of  as  pears, 
or  he  may  refer  to  alligator  pears,  which  he  is  growing 
in  Florida,  or  prickly  pears  whicli  he  is  cultivating  m 
Texas.  Both  the  alligator  pear  and  the  prickly  pear 
hare  come  in  as  crops  to  be  reckoned  with  within  the 
past  fifteen  years,  and  already  the  stockraisers  of  the 
South  are  wondering  if  they  should  plan  spiny  or  spine- 
less forms  of  the  prickly  pear  cactus,  and  the  fruit- 
growers of  Florida  are  inquiring  as  to  which  of  the 
several  varieties  of  alligator  pear  tree  is  going  to  be 
the  most  productive  and  profitable. 

To  help  find  the  plant  which  will  produce  the  best 
results  of  any  that  can  be  grown,  on  every  acre  of  land 
in  the  United  States,  is,  in  general,  the  broad  policy  of 
the  office  of  Seed  and  Plant  Introduction  of  the  Bureau 
of  Plant  Industry. 


NEW  PLANT  IMMIGRANTS  303 

Although  begun  in  a  systematic  way  and  as  a  distinct 
activity  of  the  Department  in  1897,  it  has  barely 
touched  the  fringe  of  its  possibilities.  The  31,000  dif- 
ferent plant  immigrants  which  have  come  in,  and  have 
cither  died  or  are  now  growing  somewhere  in  this  coun- 
try, represent  a  small  beginning  only,  and  have  merely 
helped  to  show  the  greatness  of  the  possibilities  which 
progress  in  agricultural  research  is  creating. 

"You  will  soon  have  all  the  crops  in,"  is  the  remark 
of  those  who  have  given  the  matter  little  thought.  Our 
o^vn  lives  change  with  every  moment  of  time,  and  so  do 
the  lives  of  plants.  The  strains  of  potato  which  our 
grandfathers  grew  are,  with  few  exceptions,  different 
from  the  strains  in  vogue  to-day ;  and,  fitting  their  lives 
into  the  various  conditions  of  soil  and  climate,  the  orig- 
inal wild  South  American  species  of  potato,  Solanum 
tuberosum,  assumes  in  the  hands  of  men  a  thousand 
different  forms. 

In  whatever  parts  of  the  world  new  forms  may  spring 
into  existence  it  matters  not ;  our  potato-growers 
should  be  able  to  try  every  sport  of  importance  and 
every  wild,  hardy  species,  whether  it  comes  from  the 
manse  of  a  Scottish  parson,  is  discovered  as  a  wild 
species  along  the  Paraguay  River  by  an  American  rail- 
way bridge-builder,  is  found  among  the  mountains  of 
Columbia  by  a  Jesuit  priest,  is  gathered  by  a  forest 
ranger  in  the  dry  regions  of  an  Indian  reservation  in 
New  Mexico,  or  is  secured  by  a  trained  collector  from 
the  Chiloe  Islands  off  the  coast  of  Chile.  It  makes  little 
difference ;  they  must  all  come  in  as  plant  immigrants  to 
show  what  they  can  do  in  the  gardens  of  American  ex- 
perts.    There  is  always  the  chance  that  they  may  be 


304  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

throAvn  out  as  unprofitable;  but,  if  they  have  desirable 
characters,  they  can  be  blended  with  others,  or  ex- 
ploited with  others,  if  they  are  superior  for  any  of  the 
potato  regions  of  this  country. 

It  may  be  new  to  many  that  every  day  plant  immi- 
grants from  different  parts  of  the  world  arrive  in 
Washington,  and  every  day,  through  the  mails,  hun- 
dreds of  these  disinfected  arrivals  go  out  to  find  a  new 
home  in  some  part  of  the  country. 

It  is  a  difficult  matter  to  give  an  adequate  impres- 
sion of  the  magnitude  and  importance  to  the  country  of 
this  stream  of  new  plant  immigrants  which  for  fourteen 
years  has  been  pouring  into  the  country,  and  has  been 
directed  by  a  great  and  growing  body  of  research  men 
and  women  into  those  regions  where  it  was  thought  they 
might  make  their  homes. 

In  the  brief  space  of  a  short  article,  and  to  avoid 
what  would  be  almost  a  bare  enumeration  of  plant 
names,  I  prefer  to  treat  of  only  a  few  of  the  many  im- 
portant problems  with  which  the  office  is  working,  pass- 
ing by,  also,  the  introduction  of  the  Durum  wheat,  the 
Japanese  rice,  and  giving  the  Siberian  alfalfas,  which 
are  earning  for  the  farmers  of  the  country  many  mil- 
lions of  dollars  a  year,  a  bare  mention,  for  the  reason 
that  they  have  been  so  often  described  in  the  magazines 
and  daily  papers. 

The  mango  is  one  of  the  really  great  fruits  of  the 
world.  India,  with  its  hundreds  of  millions  of  people, 
has  for  centuries  held  it  sacred,  and  celebrates  annual 
ceremonies  in  its  honor.  The  great  Mogul  Akbar,  who 
reigned  in  the  sixteenth  century,  planted  the  famous 
Lak  Bag,  an  orchard  of  a  hundred  thousand  mangos, 


NEW  PLANT  IMMIGRANTS  305 

and  some  of  these  still  remain  alive.  It  is  a  fruit  the 
importance  of  which  Americans  are  at  last  beginning 
to  recognize,  notwithstanding  the  unfortunate  discredit 
which  the  worthless  seedling  mangos  of  the  West  Indies 
have  given  it  in  the  minds  of  Americans  generally. 

There  are  probably  more  varieties  of  mangos  than 
there  are  of  peaches.  I  have  heard  of  one  collection  of 
five  hundred  different  sorts  in  India.  There  are  ex- 
quisitely flavored  varieties  no  larger  than  a  plum,  and 
there  are  delicious  sorts  the  fruits  of  which  are  six 
pounds  in  weight.  In  India,  where  the  wage  of  a  coolie 
is  not  over  ten  cents  a  day,  there  are  varieties  which  sell 
for  $6.60  a  hundred,  and  the  commonest  sorts  bring 
over  a  cent  apiece. 

The  great  mango  trees  of  India  are  said  to  reach  a 
height  of  seventy  feet,  and  are  so  loaded  down  with  fruit 
that  over  $150  worth  has  been  sold  from  a  single  tree. 
These  fine  varieties,  practically  as  free  from  fiber  as  a 
freestone  peach,  can  be  eaten  with  a  spoon  as  easily  as  a 
cantaloupe.  Trainloads  of  these  are  shipped  from  the 
mango-growing  centers  of  India  and  distributed  in  the 
densely  peopled  cities  of  that  great  semi-tropical  em- 
pire; and  yet,  notwithstanding  the  great  importance 
of  this  fruit,  the  agricultural  study  of  it  from  the  new 
standpoint  has  scarcely  been  begun.  I  believe  that  it 
has  never,  for  example,  been  tested  on  any  but  its  owti 
roots. 

We  have  gathered  together  in  Florida  and  Porto 
Rico  and  Hawaii  more  than  a  hundred  varieties,  and 
some  which  we  have  fruited  have  already  attracted  the 
attention  of  the  fancy  fruit  dealers,  who  agree  that  the 
demand  for  these  will  increase  as  fast  as  the  supply  can 


306  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

be  created  and  maintain  that  extravagant  prices,  such 
as  fifty  or  even  seventy-five  cents  apiece,  will  be  paid  for 
the  large,  showy,  delicious  fruits.  Last  year  three  hun- 
dred dozen  Mulgoba  mangos  were  sold  in  Florida,  for 
three  dollars  a  dozen.  The  Governor  of  Porto  Rico  has 
committed  himself  to  a  policy  which,  if  carried  out,  will 
cover  the  island  with  hundreds  of  thousands  of  mango 
trees  of  the  better  varieties. 

One  of  the  oldest  cultivated  plants  in  the  world  is  the 
date  palm.  At  least  four  thousand  years  ago  it  was 
growing  on  the  banks  of  the  Euphrates,  and  it  is  this 
plant  and  the  camel  that  together  made  it  possible  for 
the  Arabs  to  populate  the  great  deserts  of  northern 
Africa  and  Asia.  The  date  palms  would  grow  where  the 
water  was  alkaline,  and  the  camels  were  able  to  make 
long  journeys  across  the  desert  to  take  the  dates  to 
the  coast  to  market  and  sell  them  for  wheat  and 
olives. 

In  these  deserts  of  the  old  world,  millions  of  Arabs 
live  on  dates,  for  the  date  palm  can  be  cultivated  on 
land  so  salty  as  to  prevent  the  culture  of  any  other  pay- 
ing crop,  and  it  will  live  in  the  hottest  regions  on  the 
face  of  the  globe ;  not  even  a  temperature  of  125  degrees 
Fahrenheit  will  affect  it.  This  obliging  plant  does  not, 
however,  insist  on  such  temperatures,  but  will  stand 
some  frost,  and  has  been  known  to  live  where  the 
mercury  falls  to  12  degrees  Fahrenheit. 

It  is  also  the  only  wood  obtainable  in  the  oases  of 
the  Sahara,  and  on  the  shores  of  Arabia  boats  are 
made  of  it. 

The  date  palm  has  both  male  and  female  flowers  and 
they  occur  on  separate  plants,  and  the  Arabs  have  to 


NEW  PLANT  IMMIGRANTS  30T 

plant  one  male  for  every  plantation  of  a  hundred  fe- 
males, making  a  harem  as  it  were.  The  artificial  polli- 
nation or  fertilization  of  the  female  palms  is  one  of  the 
most  interesting  processes  practised  with  plants,  a 
spray  of  flowers  from  a  male  palm  being  bound  with  a 
bit  of  palm-leaf  fiber  in  each  inflorescence  of  the  fe- 
male tree.  Propagation  of  the  date  palm  can  be  ac- 
complished by  means  of  seeds,  or  suckers,  which  are 
thrown  up  at  the  base  of  the  palm.  Suckers  will  start, 
however,  on  land  so  salty  that  the  seeds  refused  to  grow 
on  it. 

Four  years  from  seed,  trees  of  some  varieties  begin  to 
bear  and  in  six  years  will  have  paying  crops  of  dates. 
They  live  to  a  much  greater  age  than  almost  any  other 
of  the  fruit  trees,  and  specimens  a  century  old  are  said 
to  be  still  a  good  investment. 

The  date  is  not  a  dry-land  crop,  but  requires  irri- 
gation to  grow  and  produce  fruit.  A  plantation  once 
established  requires  to  be  kept  free  of  weeds,  to  bo 
pollinated  when  the  palms  come  into  bloom,  and  to  have 
the  fruit  harvested  when  ripe.  Of  insect  pests  we  know 
too  little  as  yet,  though  the  prospective  planter  should 
count  this  in  his  estimate  of  expense;  remembering, 
however,  that  modern  scientific  methods  have  overcome 
the  greatest  fruit  pests,  and  that  these  on  the  palm  are 
not  difi'erent  in  general  character  from  those  which  are 
now  under  complete  control. 

Very  little  pruning  of  the  palms  is  necessary,  and  the 
harvesting  is  very  simple,  since  the  dates  grow  in  great 
bunches,  which  often  weigh  from  twenty  to  forty  pound: 
apiece. 

There  are  over  a  hundred  varieties   of  dates   noir 


308  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

growing  in  the  government  gardens  in  California  and 
Arizona,  from  which  are  being  distributed  to  prospec- 
tive planters  the  suckers  as  they  grow.  This  accom- 
plishment of  the  Department  of  Agriculture  is  not  the 
result  of  any  one  man's  effort,  but  the  product  of  at 
least  a  dozen  minds  working  over  a  period  of  twenty 
years  and  in  seven  different  countries.  And  the  names 
of  these  investigators  deserve  to  be  here  chronicled  be- 
fore their  part  of  this  unusual  work  is  forgotten,  as  the 
industry  which  is  now  growing  rapidly  brings  new  per- 
sonalities into  the  field.  Water  T.  Swingle,  to  whom  is 
due  the  credit  for  the  most  profound  work  which  has 
been  done;  H.  E.  Van  Demen,  J.  W.  Toumey,  R.  H. 
Forbes,  T.  H.  Kearney,  P.  H.  Dorsett,  A.  V.  Stuben- 
rauch,  S.  C.  Mason,  A.  J.  Pieters,  Bruce  Drummond, 
Consul  Haggleson,  E.  A.  Bessey,  Dr.  Vinson,  Bernard 
Johnson,  and  David  Fairchild  are  the  names  of  those 
who  took  the  most  active  part  in  this  problem,  while  the 
name  of  Mr.  Barbour  Lathrop,  of  Chicago,  should  be 
specially  mentioned,  since  it  was  through  his  generosity 
that  the  writer  was  able  to  make  a  study  of  the  Persian 
and  Arabian  date  regions. 

There  are  among  these  hundred  varieties  those  which 
candy  on  the  tree,  others  which  are  used  mainly  for 
cooking,  and  some  which  are  hard  and  not  sticky. 
There  are  early  varieties  and  late-ripening  ones,  va- 
rieties short  and  long,  and  every  sort  can  be  told  by  the 
srooves  on  its  seeds. 

One  of  the  finest  varieties  is  the  Deglet  Noor,  which 
will  bear  from  80  to  132  pounds  of  dates  per  tree.  As 
the  dates  sell  from  8  to  35  and  even  50  cents  a  pound, 
the  possibilities  of  a  profit  of  at  least  $150  an  acre 


NEW  PLANT  IMMIGRANTS  309 

has  been  set  as  the  probable  mean  on  well-managed 
plantations. 

The  date  as  a  delicacy  is  known  to  every  American 
child,  but,  as  a  food,  remains  to  be  discovered  by  the 
American  public.  When  the  date  plantations  of  Ari- 
zona and  California  come  into  full  bearing,  as  they 
should  in  about  ten  years,  the  hard,  dry  dates,  for  ex- 
ample, now  quite  unknown  on  our  markets,  are  sure  to 
come  into  prominence  and  find  their  way  to  the  tables 
of  the  poor  as  well  as  of  the  rich.  The  heat  of  our 
American  summers  is  forcing  us  to  study  the  hot 
weather  diets  of  other  countries,  and  dates  are  sure  to 
become  important  items  of  food. 

The  persimmon  of  the  South,  on  which  the  opossum 
fattens,  is  a  very  different  fruit  from  its  relative  the 
kaki,  or  persimmon  of  the  Orient,  the  growing  of  which 
is  so  great  an  industry  in  Japan  as  to  nearly  equal  the 
Japanese  orange-growing  industry  in  importance.  Our 
persimmon  is  a  wild  fruit,  which  will  some  day  be  do- 
mesticated, while  the  kaki  has  been  cultivated  so  long 
that  it  is  represented  by  hundreds  of  distinct  varieties 
of  different  forms  and  colors.  It  is  true  that  the 
Oriental  persimmon  has  been  grown  in  this  country ;  in 
fact,  the  census  records  a  production  of  68  tons ;  but 
this  is  scarcely  a  beginning  as  compared  with  the 
194,000  tons  which  is  the  output  of  Japan. 

We  have  misunderstood  the  persimmon.  Our  own 
wild  ones  we  can  eat  only  after  they  have  been  touched 
b}'^  the  frost,  and  the  imported  Japanese  ones  we  have 
left  until  they  become  soft  and  mushy  and  almost  on  the 
verge  of  decay.  We  never  thought  until  quite  recently 
of  wondering  whether  in  a  land  where  the  persimmon 


310  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

had  been  cultivated  for  centuries  they  would  not  have 
\Torked  out  some  artificial  method  of  removing  the 
objectionable  pucker.  In  Japan  we  find  this  is  done  by 
packing  the  fruit  in  barrels  saturated  with  sake,  and 
Mr.  H.  C.  Gore,  of  the  Department  of  Agriculture,  is 
now  working  out  new  methods  of  processing  the  Oriental 
persimmon,  so  that  it  can  be  eaten  when  hard  as  an 
apple,  and  there  will  no  longer  be  any  reason  why  it 
should  not  take  its  place  among  the  great  fruits  of  the 
country. 

We  have  also  introduced  a  Chinese  persimmon  which 
Mr.  Frank  Meyer  found  in  the  Ming  Tombs  Valley, 
the  Tamopan,  four  inches  in  diameter,  and  seedless  and 
puckerless. 

The  whole  question  of  the  improvement  of  the  per- 
simmon has  been  opened  up  and  we  are  getting  for  this 
work  the  small-fruited  species  called  "lotus,"  from 
Algeria;  a  tropical  species  with  white,  cheese-like  pulp, 
from  Manila,  Mexico,  Erithea,  and  Rhodesia ;  species 
from  Bangalore,  from  Sydney,  from  Madras,  from  the 
Mankau  Pass,  in  China,  and  from  the  Caucasus. 

There  are  large  areas  of  the  West  where  the  native 
persimmon  is  the  slowest  tree  to  wake  up  in  the  warm 
spells  that  visit  tliat  region  in  February.  It  is  reported 
that  in  Oklahoma  last  February  the  temperature  went 
up  to  80  degrees  Fahrenheit,  which  is  as  high  as  the 
average  midsummer  temperature.  This  will  wake  up 
almost  any  tree  or  plant  except  the  persimmon,  and 
when  a  temperature  of  17  degrees  below  zero  follows,  it 
kills  thousands  of  plants  to  the  ground.  If  the  fine 
imported  varieties  can  by  breeding  be  made  to  share 
this    characteristic   with   their   American   relatives,   it 


NEW  PLANT  IMMIGRANTS  311 

will  be  an  added  reason  for  their  extensive  cultivation. 

If  the  Oriental  timber  bamboo  had  produced  seeds 
oftener  than  once  in  forty  years  it  would  long  ago  have 
been  introduced  and  be  now  growing  in  the  South.  The 
fact  that  it  had  to  be  brought  over  in  the  form  of  living 
plants,  and  that  these  plants  required  special  treat- 
ment, has  stood  in  the  way  of  the  quick  distribution  of 
this  most  important  plant  throughout  those  portions  of 
America  where  it  will  grow.  After  several  unsuccessful 
attempts,  a  beginning  has  at  last  been  made,  and  the 
Department  has  a  grove  of  Oriental  bamboos  in 
northern  Florida,  and  a  search  is  being  made  in  dif- 
ferent parts  of  the  world  for  all  those  species  which  are 
adapted  to  our  climate. 

It  was  while  I  was  traveling  in  Japan  for  Mr.  Barbour 
Lathrop,  of  Chicago,  that  he  called  my  attention  to  the 
great  importance  of  the  bamboo  as  a  new  crop  for  the 
South.  He  was  so  firmly  convinced  of  its  importance 
that  he  offered  to  purchase  and  send  as  a  gift  to  the 
country  two  thousand  plants  for  trial.  Unfortunately, 
the  offer  was  not  accepted,  and  it  was  not  until  several 
years  later  that  the  large  shipment  was  made  which  is 
now  establishing  itself  in  northern  Florida,  where  the 
first  commercial  grove  of  these  remarkable  plants  is  to 
find  its  home. 

"Of  what  practical  use  is  the  bamboo?"  is  the  ques- 
tion of  the  Occidental,  and  it  must  seem  to  the  Oriental 
as  singular  as  his  question  would  be,  "Of  what  use  is 
the  white  pine  to  the  American?"  For  there  is  no 
plant  in  the  world  which  is  put  to  so  many  uses  as  the 
bamboo,  and  in  the  regions  where  it  grows  it  is  ap- 
parently the  most  indispensable  of  all  plants. 


312  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

In  this  country  I  predict  it  will  be  used  earliest  for 
barrel  hoops,  for  cheap  irrigating  pipes,  for  vine-stakes 
and  trellises,  for  light  ladders  and  stays  for  overloaded 
fruit  trees,  for  baskets  and  light-fruit  shipping  crates, 
and  for  food.  As  wind-breaks  and  to  hold  canal  banks 
and  prevent  the  erosion  of  steep  hillsides,  there  are 
species  which  excel  all  other  plants,  while  for  light 
furniture  and  jalousies  it  is  sure  to  find  a  market  when- 
ever the  green  timber  is  available. 

Unlike  the  forest  trees,  the  giant  bamboos  are  true 
grasses.  They  send  underground  stems  long  distances 
through  the  soil,  binding  it  together  with  hard,  flintlike 
rhizomes.  They  send  up  from  this  network  of  roots  and 
rhizomes  the  most  rapid-growing  shoots  of  any  plants 
known;  and,  like  giant  asparagus  stems,  these  shoot 
at  the  rate  of  a  foot  a  day  into  the  air.  So  fresh  and 
tender  are  these  shoots  that  they  can  be  snapped  off 
with  the  hand,  and  when  cooked  they  form  one  of  the 
great  vegetable  delicacies  of  the  world. 

No  wonder,  then,  considering  all  the  uses  of  this 
plant,  that  the  Chief  Forester  of  Japan,  when  I  asked 
him  about  the  value  of  the  bamboo  industry  in  his 
country,  said  at  once:  "It's  the  best-paying  plant 
industry  in  Japan."  I  am  aware  that  there  enters  in 
here  that  complicated  question  of  the  cheapness  of 
Oriental  labor,  and  that  there  are  many  things  which 
we  cannot  do  with  the  bamboo  which  are  done  in  Japan 
and  China.  But  all  these  things  aside,  the  bamboo  still 
remains  one  of  the  most  promising  plant  introductions. 

While  perhaps  the  great  majority  of  these  new 
plants  are  brought  in  or  purchased  directly  as  results 
of  investigations  carried  on  in  Washington,  some  of  the 


NEW  PLANT  IMMIGRANTS  313 

most  valuable  things  have  been  sent  in  by  men  and 
women  living  as  missionaries  or  voluntary  exiles  in  the 
most  out-of-the-way  places  in  the  world. 

Plant  introduction  is  not  a  matter  of  one  generation, 
and  it  is  most  preeminently  a  work  requiring  many  men 
working  to-gcther,  and  I  doubt  if  there  is  to  be  found 
within  the  government  service,  or  outside  of  it,  a  better 
example  of  cooperative,  constructive  investigation  than 
that  connected  with  the  Bureau  of  Plant  Industry  in 
the  establishment  of  new  plant  industries  in  the  United 
States. 

On  the  streets  of  almost  any  Japanese  city  the  fruit 
and  vegetable  stalls  have  for  sale  an  attractive  blanched 
vegetable  called  udo.  It  is  a  neai^  relative  of  a  well- 
known  wild  plant  in  New  England,  the  spikenard,  but 
a  much  larger-plant.  There  are  many  ways  in  which  it  is 
prepared  by  both  the  Japanese  and  the  foreigners  who 
live  in  Japan;  but,  either  as  a  salad  or  cooked  in  the 
same  way  in  which  asparagus  is  cooked,  it  deserves  to 
rank  as  one  of  the  important  vegetables  of  the  world. 
It  is  easy  to  grow;  it  does  not  require  replanting 
oftener  than  once  in  nine  or  ten  years  ;  it  can  be  cropped 
in  the  autumn  or  in  the  spring,  and  it  yields  large  crops 
of  shoots,  which  are  often  two  feet  long  and  an  inch 
or  more  in  diameter  at  the  base.  These  brilliant  white 
shoots  are  edible  to  their  very  bases  Avithout  the  least 
objectionable  fiber,  and  not  in  this  respect  like  aspar- 
agus, of  which  only  the  tips  are-  fit  to  eat. 

It  wa^  while  traveling  with  Mr.  Barbour  Lathrop 
that  the  writer  first  made  the  acquaintance  of  this 
vegetable  and  at  his  suggestion  that  plants  of  it  were 
sent  to  America,  in  1902. 


314  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

One  of  our  best-known  botanical  authorities  once 
remarked  to  me:  "You  cannot  introduce  a  new  vege- 
table ;  it's  impossible."  While  it  might  be  admitted  that 
the  introduction  of  a  new  vegetable  is  a  long  under- 
taking, extending  perhaps  over  the  period  of  a  gener- 
ation, it  should  not  be  left  out  of  account  that  the  means 
at  our  disposal  to-day  are  immeasurably  more  power- 
ful than  they  were  even  two  decades  ago.  The  advent 
of  the  great  hotels  and  the  sympathetic  interest  of  the 
great  magazines  are  two  elements  which  to-day  make 
possible  what  yesterday  would  have  been  quite  impos- 
sible. 

The  magazines  will  talk  about  a  new  vegetable  and 
can  now  illustrate  it  as  never  before  and  in  this  way 
encourage  people  to  ask  for  it,  and  the  great  hotels 
have  learned  to  profit  by  the  introduction  of  novelties. 

Of  course,  from  the  narrow  standpoint  of  the  aspar- 
agus grower  we  should  all  eat  asparagus,  and  he 
watches  every  sign  that  indicates  any  tendency  on  the 
part  of  the  public  to  consume  more  of  his  vegetable, 
and  he  is  not  often  likely  to  look  with  favor  on  any 
rival.  But  let  fancy  prices  be  established  by  a  legiti- 
mate publicity  and  the  encouragement  of  some  of  the 
large  hotels,  and  the  growers  of  asparagus  will  soon 
find  out  that  there  is  money  in  growing  the  new  vege- 
table. We  can  trust  to  a  final  readjustment  of  things, 
once  the  new  plant  is  thoroughly  .established. 

It  was  with  this  point  in  view  that  an  arrangement 
was  made  with  the  National  Geographic  Society,  at  its 
last  Annual  Banquet,  to  serve  as  one  of  the  courses  the 
dasheen,  which  is  the  root  of  a  large-leaved  plant  re- 
lated to  the  Hawaiian  taro.    The  guests  of  the  Society 


NEW  PLANT  IMMIGRANTS  315 

were  kind  enough  to  pass  judgment  on  this  new  intro- 
duction, deciding  it  to  be  a  valuable  addition  to  the 
menu,  many  even  going  so  far  as  to  declare  that  it  sur- 
passed the  potato  in  excellence. 

The  stimulus  given  to  the  cultivation  of  this  dasheen 
by  this  exhibition  has  been  very  great  and  to-day 
thousands  have  heard  of  it,  and,  if  they  saw  it  oflfered 
on  the  menu  of  a  first-class  hotel,  would  be  much  more 
likely  to  call  for  it  than  if  they  had  never  read  of  its 
peculiar  adaotability  to  the  moist  but  well-drained 
lands  of  the  Southern  States. 


XXIII 

BACTERIA  AND  SOIL  FERTILITY  * 

P.  E.  Brown 

The  problem  of  obtaining  maximum  crops  is  centu- 
ries old  but  the  agricultural  world  is  still  awaiting  its 
solution. 

It  is  known  now  that  the  crop  any  soil  will  yield  under 
particular  climatic  conditions  depends  on  the  character 
and  condition  of  the  soil.  If  the  soil  is  poor  and  infer- 
tile, the  crop  may  be  expected  to  be  small ;  if  it  is  rich 
and  climatic  conditions  are  favorable,  the  yields  should 
be  large.  The  real  problem,  then,  is  how  to  make  the 
soil  fertile  and  how  to  keep  it  so.  If  it  is  poor,  then 
improvement  is  necessary ;  if  it  is  good,  further  im- 
provement may  pay.  There  are  probably  few  soils  so 
poor  that  proper  methods  cannot  put  them  on  a  paying 
basis ;  on  the  other  hand,  there  are  no  soils  so  rich  that 
they  will  always  continue  to  be  fertile. 

Therefore,  a  study  -of  soil  fertility,  or  the  crop  pro- 
ducing power  of  a  soil  under  given  climatic  conditions, 
is  of  vast  importance.  Men  must  have  knowledge  of 
the  fertility  of  a  soil  if  they  would  properly  regulate 
its  support  power  so  that  the  needed  supply  of  plant 
food  may  be  available  for  crop  production. 

Plant  food  consists  of  those  chemical  elements  which 

*  From  Bacteria  and  Soil  Fertility,  by  permission  of  the  Iowa  Agricul- 
.tural  Experiment  Station,  Iowa  State  College. 

316 


BACTERIA  AND  SOIL  FERTILITY      317 

are  essential  for  the  growth  of  plants  and  includes  a 
large  number  of  substances.  Among  these,  nitrogen, 
potassium,  phosphorus,  and  sulphur  are  most  likely  to 
be  lacking  in  soils.  In  rare  cases  other  elements  may  be 
deficient,  but  in  normal  soils,  if  enough  of  these  four 
elements  is  present  in  a  soluble,  available  form,  the  sup- 
port power  of  the  soil  is  satisfactory. 

Many  soils  contain  enough  of  these  four  necessary 
elements  but  they  are  locked  up  in  an  insoluble  and  un- 
available form  and  hence  must  be  changed  and  made 
soluble  to  be  of  use  to  crops.  How  is  this  change  ac- 
complished? What  determines  the  production  of 
soluble  plant  food  in  the  soil?  What  regulates  the  sup- 
port power  of  the  soil?  These  are  the  questions  that 
require  a  definite  answer. 

The  factors  which  bring  about  the  change  of  insol- 
uble substances  into  soluble  in  the  soil  may  be  grouped 
into  three  classes,  physical,  chemical,  and  bacteriolog- 
ical. 

The  physical  factors,  such  as  light,  heat,  water,  air, 
etc.,  and  the  chemical  factors,  such  as  soil  acidity  or 
sourness,  the  character  of  the  chemical  compounds 
present,  etc.,  have  been  known  and  studied  for  many 
years.  The  bacteriological  factors  have  come  into 
prominence  only  quite  recently,  but  now  they  are  recog- 
nized to  be  of  as  much,  if  not  more  importance  than  the 
other  two  groups. 

It  has  been  well  said  that  these  three  groups  of  fac- 
tors working  together  constitute  the  "commissary  de- 
partment for  the  army  of  plant  life." 

W^hile,  therefore,  it  is  quite  generally  known  now 
that  the  soil  is  the  home  of  myriads  of  microscopic 


318  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

plants  ciilled  bacteria,  and  that  these  have  much  to  do 
with  fertility,  there  is  still  a  great  deal  of  haziness 
about  the  subject  in  the  public  mind. 

Before  considering  the  part  which  bacteria  take  in 
liberating  plant  food  it  is  well  to  bear  in  mind  the 
fundamental  facts  about  bacteria. 

'Bacteria  are  minute  plants,  consisting  of  single  cells. 
These  cells  are  made  up  of  a  cell-wall,  and  the  living 
substance  or  protoplasm  within  the  cell-wall.  In  the 
protoplasm  the  life  processes  are  carried  on.  When 
food  is  absorbed,  it  passes  into  the  cell  through  the  cell- 
wall  and  the  necessary  portions  are  taken  up  by  the 
protoplasm  while  the  waste  is  eliminated,  passing  out 
through  the  cell-wall. 

There  are  three  main  types  of  bacteria  grouped  ac- 
cording to  form.  They  are  the  cocci  or  spheres,  the 
bacilli  or  rods,  and  the  spirilla  or  spirals.  These 
groups  have  been  popularly  described  as  billiard  balls, 
lead  pencils,  and  corkscrews.  By  far  the  largest  number 
of  soil  bacteria  belong  to  the  group  of  bacilli  or  rods. 

These  simple  organisms  multiply  by  fission,  that  is, 
one  cell  divides  into  two  equal  parts,  which  may  sep- 
arate or  may  remain  united.  The  spherical  bacteria, 
due  to  their  method  of  multiplication,  frequently  ap- 
pear as  packets  of  varying  numbers  of  organisms,  while 
the  rods  and  spirals  appear  singly  or  in  chains. 

The  splitting  of  one  organism  into  two  may  be  com- 
pleted in  twenty  minutes  to  one  half  hour  under  very 
favorable  conditions.  At  this  rate,  in  one  day  one 
organism  would  become  about  300,000,000,000,000. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  however,  such  a  rapid  multiplica- 
tion cannot  occur,  as  food  conditions  do  not  remain 


BACTERIA  AND  SOIL  FERTILITY      319 

satisfactory  and  the  growth  of  the  organism  gives 
products  that  restrict  development. 

Bacteria  are  very  small,  ranging  from  1-50,000  to 
1-1,000  of  an  inch  in  length  and  averaging  about 
1-25,000  of  an  inch. 

Many  bacteria  have  flagella,  or  long  thread-like  ap- 
pendages, by  means  of  which  they  move  about  freely 
in  any  liquid  in  which  they  may  be  growing.  These 
flagella  may  be  attached  in  various  ways,  singly  at  the 
end  of  the  organism,  in  tufts  of  several  at  one  or  both 
ends,  or  scattered  indiscriminately  over  the  organism. 

Some  bacteria,  under  certain  conditions,  produce  so- 
called  spores,  or  cells  surrounded  by  a  very  resistant 
cell-wall.  Thej^  will  remain  alive  practically  indefinitely 
if  not  exposed  to  extremes  of  heat  or  cold  and  if  kept 
dry;  and  Avhen  placed  under  favorable  conditions  will 
germinate  and  produce  active  bacteria  again. 

All  bacteria  may  be  included  in  one  of  two  large 
classes  depending  on  their  functions,  or  the  character 
of  their  activities.  These  are  parasites  and  the  sapro- 
phytes. The  parasites  include  all  the  disease  producers. 
The  saprophytes  are  the  decay  producers.  Many 
people  think  of  all  bacteria  as  connected  with  disease. 
They  know  that  typhoid,  diphtheria,  tuberculosis, 
and  other  diseases  are  caused  by  bacteria  and  fall 
into  the  error  of  believing  that  all  organisms  arc 
active  in  causing  some  dread  disease.  Such  is  far  from 
being  the  case,  however.  The  saprophytic,  or  decay 
bacteria,  are  invaluable.  They  have  been  called  the 
"link  between  the  world  of  the  living  and  the  dead." 
They  transform  dead  materials  back  into  living  matter 
and  thus  complete  the  cycles  through  which,  in  nature, 


320  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

all  substances  must  go.  Bacteria  are  everywhere,  in 
the  air,  the  water,  the  soil,  but  contrary  to  the  common 
belief,  which  is  that  we  are  becoming  "bacteria  crazy," 
such  general  distribution  is  no  cause  for  alarm  but 
rather  a  source  of  benefit.  A  bacteria-free  world  would 
soon  be  a  dead  world. 

Enormous  numbers  of  bacteria  inhabit  the  soil,  some 
of  them  harmful,  but  the  vast  majority  beneficial. 
Actual  counts  have  shown  that  the  numbers  present  in 
the  soils  may  vary  from  a  few  thousand  per  gram  to 
over  fifty  million  per  gram. 

There  are  certain  conditions  affecting  their  growth. 
In  other  words,  the  bacteria  in  the  soil,  just  as  in  any 
other  environment,  are  greatly  influenced  by  certain 
physical  and  chemical  conditions.  These  conditions  are 
moisture,  temperature,  aeration,  reaction,  and  food 
supply. 

A  proper  amount  of  water  in  the  soil  is  as  necessary 
for  the  growth  of  bacteria  as  for  crops.  Either  excess- 
ive moisture  or  severe  drought  interferes  with  bacterial 
growth  very  considerably.  Many  organisms  are  killed 
by  too  much  moisture,  many  others,  by  insufficient 
moisture.  Merely  drying  out  a  soil  by  exposing  it  to 
the  air,  however,  will  not  kill  the  bacteria  present.  Such 
soils,  kept  for  years  in  an  air-dry  state,  have  been  shown 
to  contain  certain  bacteria  which  had  evidently  been  in 
a  dormant  state  or  condition.  Such  farm  practices  as 
drainage,  which  removes  excessive  water,  or  cultivation, 
which  prevents  undue  loss  of  water  by  evaporation,  have 
an  important  influence  on  the  bacteria  in  the  soil. 
Recent  work  has  shown  that  small  variations  in 
moisture  are  of  little  influence  on  bacteria  in  the  field, 


BACTERIA  AND  SOIL  FERTILITY      321 

other  factors  apparently  being  of  greater  importance, 
but  when  variations  are  large,  then  moisture  becomes 
the  governing  factor. 

Every  organism  grows  the  best  in  a  certain  temper- 
ature. Each  also  has  so-called  maximum  and  minimum 
temperatures  at  which  point  growth  ceases.  The  best 
temperature  for  most  soil  organisms  ranges  from  65°  to 
90°  F.,  although  of  course  there  are  exceptions  to  this 
statement.  Most  organisms  are  not  killed  by  excessive 
cold  but  merely  remain  dormant.  In  fact,  it  has  been 
shown  recently  that  certain  bacteria  are  alive  and 
active  in  soil  in  late  winter,  at  a  soil  temperature  some- 
what below  the  freezing  point.  It  is  generally  con- 
sidered, however,  and  with  reason,  that  the  greatest 
bacterial  activities  occur  in  the  soil  during  the  summer 
and  are  then  of  the  most  significance. 

Depending  upon  their  requirements  as  to  air,  bac- 
teria may  be  divided  into  three  classes:  those  which 
require  air  for  their  growth ;  those  which  grow  only  in 
the  absence  of  air ;  and  those  which  prefer  air  but  will 
grow  without  it.  In  general  it  may  be  said  that  the 
beneficial  bacteria  in  the  soil  need  air.  Hence  in  heavy 
clay  soils  where  there  is  not  enough  air,  methods  which 
increase  the  circulation  of  oxygen  in  the  soil  increase 
bacterial  activities ;  these  increase  the  solution  of  plant 
food  and  this  ultimately  increases  plant  production.  On 
the  other  hand,  if  there  is  too  much  air  present,  as  in 
light  sandy  soils,  the  bacterial  activities  will  be  too 
great  and  the  humus  will  be  burned  up  too  rapidly, 
plant  food  will  be  produced  in  too  large  quantities  to 
be  utilized  by  the  crops,  and  more  or  less  extensive  losses 
of  valuable  soil  elements  will  occur.     Methods  must  be 


322  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

practised  with  such  soils,  which  will  make  it  more  com- 
pact and  prevent  the  excessive  circulation  of  air,  reduc- 
ing bacterial  activities  to  what  is  best. 

The  reaction  of  a  soil  is  its  relative  acidity,  or  "sour- 
ness" or  alkalinity.  The  reaction  means  much  from  the 
bacterial  standpoint.  Soils  which  have  become  acid  or 
sour  are  notably  unproductive  and  this  is  largely  due 
to  the  fact  that  the  growth  of  beneficial  bacteria  in 
such  soils  is  checked.  Some  bacteria  are  probably 
favored  by  acid  conditions,  but  those  organisms  which 
bring  about  the  solution  of  the  important  plant  food 
constituents  refuse  to  develop  in  acid  soils.  Such  an 
unfavorable  condition  may  be  remedied  by  applications 
of  ground  limestone  or  caustic  lime  in  varying  amounts. 
Applications  of  ground  limestone  to  sour  soils  have 
been  shown  to  be  followed  by  increased  beneficial  bac- 
teria activities  and  later  bj'  increased  crop  production. 

Bacteria  require  food  for  growth  just  as  trul}^  as  do 
crops,  and  it  is  because  of  this  need  that  they  influence 
fertility.  In  the  process  of  taking  up  food  from  the 
chemical  compounds  in  the  soil,  the  bacteria  cause 
changes  in  the  compounds,  making  them  soluble  and 
hence  available  for  the  growth  of  plants.  Most  soil 
bacteria  live  principally  on  organic  matter,  or  humus, 
and  the  products  of  their  own  activity.  Some  few 
speciey  are  known  which  live  in  the  absence  of  organic 
materials.  Usually,  however,  soils  without  humus  are 
without  bacteria.  Increasing  the  humus  content,  there- 
fore, may  be  expected  to  increase  the  bacterial  life. 
That  is  actually  the  case  up  to  a  certain  limit,  which 
varies  widely  for  different  soils. 

Beyond  a  certain  point,  however,  the  amount  of  food 


BACTERIA  AND  SOIL  FERTILITY      32,3 

ceases  to  govern  bacterial  growth  and  a  lack  of  mois- 
ture or  the  presence  of  acidity  or  sourness  may  offset 
the  benefits  of  a  greater  food  supply.  The  minerals  in 
the  soil  solution  also  have  some  influence  on  the  bac- 
teria. Certain  groups  are  favored  by  some  substances 
and  others  restricted  or  killed  by  certain  other  chem- 
icals. Thus  the  bacterial  floras  of  the  soils  of  wet  and 
dry  regions  are  quite  different. 

The  bacteria  furthermore  not  only  act  on  the  humus 
or  organic  matter  in  the  soil  and  bring  about  its 
solution  in  the  process  of  obtaining  their  food,  but  they 
also  attack  the  mineral  portion  of  the  soil  and  change 
insoluble  portions  of  that  into  soluble. 

We  have  considered  the  fact  that  the  fertility  of  a 
soil  is  determined  very  largely  by  the  bacterial  activ- 
ities going  on  therein.  We  have  discussed  briefly  the 
nature  of  bacteria,  their  form,  size,  multiplication,  etc., 
the  numbers  present  in  the  soil  and  the  effect  of  various 
physical  and  chemical  conditions  in  the  soil  on  their  de- 
velopment. We  have  found  also  that  in  the  course  of 
their  life  activities,  bacteria  attack  the  organic  and 
mineral  portions  of  the  soil  and  transform  insoluble 
constituents  into  forms  soluble  and  available  for  crop 
nourishment. 

In  conclusion,  the  fact  must  be  emphasized  that  the 
bacterial  processes  going  on  in  the  soil  cannot  be 
ignored  in  a  consideration  of  its  fertility.  The  physical 
and  chemical  character  of  the  soil  alone  will  not  tell  us 
its  crop-producing  power  and  we  must  depend  on  the 
results  of  tests  of  bacterial  activities.  The  recent 
development  of  methods  in  this  direction  gives  us 
reason  to  hope  that  in  the  near  future  bacterial  tests 


324  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

of  fertility  may  become  of  considerable  practical  value. 

From  the  practical  standpoint,  it  should  be  evident 
that  the  greatest  care  ought  to  be  exercised  on  every 
farm  to  maintain  conditions  satisfactory  for  the  best 
growth  of  beneficial  bacterial  species.  Moisture  con- 
ditions should  be  governed  as  far  as  possible  by  drain- 
age or  cultivation,  aeration  should  be  carefully  reg- 
ulated to  keep  the  destruction  of  the  humus  from 
proceeding  too  rapidly;  and  the  reaction  of  the  soil 
should  not  be  allowed  to  become  acid,  adding  lime  if 
necessary  to  prevent  it.  If  these  conditions  are  care- 
fully governed  and  the  humus  content  of  the  soils  is 
properly  maintained,  and  proper  rotations  containing 
a  legume  are  employed,  the  bacteria  can  be  depended 
upon  to  perform  their  part  faithfully  and  well.  If 
chemical  analyses  have  shown  sufficient  amounts  of  the 
necessary  mineral  plant  food  constituents,  the  bacteria 
under  the  best  conditions  will  transform  it  into  an 
available  form  to  satisfy  the  needs  of  the  growing  crop. 

In  short,  the  relation  between  bacteria  and  soil 
fertility  is  very  close  and  very  vital  and  systems  of 
permanent  agriculture  must  rest  firmly  on  a  bacteri- 
ological basis  to  be  of  value. 


XXIV 

WORMS  AND  THE  SOIL 

Charles  Darwin 

Worms  have  played  a  more  important  part  in  the 
history  of  the  world  than  most  persons  would  at  first 
suppose.  In  almost  all  humid  countries  they  are  extra- 
ordinarily numerous,  and  for  their  size  possess  great 
muscular  power.  In  many  parts  of  England  a  weight 
of  more  than  ten  tons  of  dry  earth  annually  passes 
through  their  bodies  and  is  brought  to  the  surface  on 
each  acre  of  land;  so  that  the  whole  superficial  bed  of 
vegetable  mould  passes  through  their  bodies  in  the 
course  of  every  few  years.  From  the  collapsing  of  the 
old  burrows  the  mould  is  in  constant  though  slow  move- 
ment, and  the  particles  composing  it  are  thus  rubbed 
together.  By  these  means  fresh  surfaces  are  contin- 
ually exposed  to  the  action  of  the  carbonic  acid  in  the 
soil,  and  of  the  humus-acids  which  appear  to  be  still 
more  efficient  in  the  decomposition  of  rocks.  The  gen- 
eration of  the  humus-acids  is  probably  hastened  during 
the  digestion  of  the  many  half-decayed  leaves  which 
worms  consume.  Thus  the  particles  of  earth,  forming 
the  superficial  mould,  are  subjected  to  conditions 
eminently  favorable  for  their  decomposition  and  dis- 
integration. Moreover,  the  particles  of  the  softer 
rocks  suffer  some  amount  of  mechanical  trituration  in 

325 


326  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

the  muscular  gizzards  of  worms,  in  which  small  stones 
serve  as  mill-stones. 

The  finely  levigated  castings,  when  brought  to  the 
surface  in  a  moist  condition,  flow  during  rainy  weather 
down  any  moderate  slope ;  and  the  smaller  particles  are 
washed  far  down  even  a  gentl}'  inclined  surface.  Cast- 
ings when  dry  often  crumple  into  small  pellets  and  these 
are  apt  to  roll  down  any  sloping  surface.  Where  the 
land  is  quite  level  and  is  covered  with  herbage,  and 
where  the  climate  is  humid  so  that  much  dust  cannot  be 
blown  awaj"^,  it  appears  at  first  sight  impossible  that 
there  should  be  any  appreciable  amount  of  subaerial 
denudation ;  but  worm  castings  are  blown,  especially 
whilst  moist  and  viscid,  in  one  uniform  direction  by  the 
prevalent  winds  which  are  accompanied  by  rain.  By 
these  several  means  the  superficial  mould  is  prevented 
from  accumulating  to  a  great  thickness ;  and  a  thick 
bed  of  mould  checks  in  many  ways  the  disintegration  of 
the  underlying  rocks  and  fragments  of  rock. 

The  removal  of  worm  castings  by  the  above  means 
leads  to  results  which  are  far  from  insignificant.  It 
has  been  shown  that  a  layer  of  earth,  two  tenths  of  an 
inch  in  thickness,  is  in  many  places  annually  brought 
to  the  surface  per  acre ;  and  if  a  small  part  of  this 
amount  flows,  or  rolls,  or  is  washed,  even  for  a  short 
distance  down  every  inclined  surface,  or  is  repeatedly 
blown  in  one  direction,  a  great  effect  will  be  produced 
in  the  course  of  ages.  It  was  found  b}'  measurements 
and  calculations  that  on  a  surface  with  a  mean  inclina- 
tion of  9°26',  two  and  four  tenths  cubic  inches  of 
earth  which  had  been  ejected  by  worms  crossed,  in  the 
course  of  a  year,  a  horizontal  line  one  yard  in  length ;  so 


WORMS  AND  THE  SOIL  327 

that  240  cubic  inches  would  cross  a  line  100  yai'ds  in 
length.  This  latter  amount  in  a  damp  state  would 
weigh  11^/^  pounds.  Thus  a  considerable  weight  of 
earth  is  continually  moving  down  each  side  of  every 
valley,  and  will  in  time  reach  its  bed.  Finally  this 
earth  will  be  transported  by  the  streams  flowing  in  the 
valleys  into  the  ocean,  the  great  receptacle  for  all 
matter  denuded  from  the  land.  It  is  known  from  the 
amount  of  sediment  annually  delivered  into  the  sea  by 
the  Mississippi,  that  its  enormous  drainage-area  must 
on  an  average  be  lowered  .00263  of  an  inch  each  year ; 
and  this  would  suffice  in  four  and  a  half  million  years 
to  lower  the  whole  drainage-area  to  the  level  of  the  sea- 
shore. So  that,  if  a  small  fraction  of  the  layer  of  fine 
earth,  two  tenths  of  an  inch  in  thickness,  which  is 
annually  brought  to  the  surface  by  worms,  is  carried 
away,  a  great  result  cannot  fail  to  be  produced  within 
a  period  which  no  geologist  considers  extremely  long. 
Archasologists  ought  to  be  grateful  to  worms,  as  they 
protect  and  preserve  for  an  indefinitely  long  period 
every  object  not  liable  to  decay,  which  is  dropped  on 
the  surface  of  the  land,  by  burying  it  beneath  their 
castings.  Thus,  also,  many  elegant  and  curious  tessel- 
lated pavements  and  other  ancient  remains  have  been 
preserved ;  though  no  doubt  the  worms  have  in  these 
cases  been  largely  aided  by  earth  washed  and  blown 
from  the  adjoining  land,  especially  when  cultivated. 
The  old  tessellated  pavements  have,  however,  often  suf- 
fered by  having  subsided  unequally  from  being  un- 
equally undermined  by  the  worms.  Even  old  massive 
walls  may  be  undermined  and  subside;  and  no  building 
is  in  this  respect  safe,  unless  the  foundations  lie  six 


328  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

or  seven  feet  beneath  the  surface,  at  a  depth  at  which 
worms  cannot  work.  It  is  probable  that  many  mono- 
liths and  some  old  Avails  have  fallen  down  from  having 
been  undermined  by  worms. 

Worms  prepare  the  ground  in  an  excellent  manner 
for  the  growth  of  fibrous-rooted  plants  and  for  seed- 
lings of  all  kinds.  They  periodically  expose  the  mould 
to  the  air,  and  sift  it  so  that  no  stones  larger  than  tht,> 
particles  which  they  can  swallow  are  left  in  it.  They 
•mingle  the  whole  intimately  together,  like  a  gardener 
who  prepares  fine  soil  for  his -choicest  plants.  In  this 
state  it  is  well  fitted  to  retain  moisture  and  to  absorb 
all  soluble  substances,  as  well  as  for  the  process  of 
nitrification.  The  bones  of  dead  animals,  the  harder 
parts  of  insects,  the  shells  of  land-molluscs,  leaves, 
twigs,  etc.,  are  before  long  all  buried  beneath  the  ac- 
cumulated castings  of  worms,  and  are  thus  brought 
in  a  more  or  less  decayed  state  within  reach  of  the  roots 
of  plants.  Worms  likewise  drag  an  infinite  number  of 
dead  leaves  and  other  parts  of  plants  into  their  bur- 
rows, partly  for  the  sake  of  plugging  them  up  and 
partly  as  food. 

The  leaves  which  are  dragged  into  the  burrows  as 
food,  after  being  torn  into  the  finest  shreds,  partially 
digested,  and  saturated  with  the  intestinal  and  urinary 
secretions,  are  commingled  with  much  earth.  This 
earth  forms  the  dark  colored,  rich  humus  which  almost 
everywhere  covers  the  surface  of  the  land  with  a  fairly 
well-defined  layer  or  mantle.  Von  Hensen*  placed  two 
worms  in  a  vessel  eighteen  inches  in  diameter,  which 
was  filled  with  sand,  on  which  fallen  leaves  were  strewed ; 

*  "Zeitschrift  filr  Wlssenschaft,"  Zoolog.  B.  XXVIII.  1877,  p.  360. 


WORMS  AND  THE  SOIL  329 

and  these  were  soon  dragged  into  their  burrows  to  a 
depth  of  three  inches.  After  about  six  weeks  an  almost 
uniform  layer  of  sand  four  tenths  of  an  inch  in  thick- 
ness was  converted  into  humus  by  having  passed 
through  the  alimentary  canals  of  these  two  worms.  It 
is  believed  by  some  people  that  worm  burrows,  which 
often  penetrate  the  ground  almost  perpendicularly  to 
a  depth  of  five  or  six  feet,  materially  aid  in  its  drain- 
age ;  notwithstanding  that  the  viscid  castings  piled  over 
the  mouths  of  the  burrows  prevent  or  check  the  rain- 
water directly  entering  them.  They  allow  the  air 
to  penetrate  deeply  into  the  ground.  They  also  great- 
ly facilitate  the  downward  passage  of  roots  of  moderate 
size;  and  these  will  be  nourished  by  the  humus  with 
which  the  burrows  are  lined.  Many  seeds  owe  their  ger- 
mination to  having  been  covered  by  castings  ;  and  others 
buried  to  a  considerable  depth  beneath  accumulated 
castings  lie  dormant,  until  at  some  future  time  they 
are  accidentally  uncovered  and  germinate. 

Worms  are  poorly  provided  with  sense-organs,  for 
they  cannot  be  said  to  see,  although  they  can  just 
distinguish  between  light  and  darkness;  they  are 
completely  deaf,  and  have  only  a  feeble  power  of  smell ; 
the  sense  of  touch  alone  is  well  developed.  They  can 
therefore  learn  little  about  the  outside  world,  and  it 
is  surprising  that  they  should  exhibit  some  skill  in  lining 
their  burrows  with  their  castings  and  with  leaves,  and 
in  the  case  of  some  species  in  piling  up  their  castings 
into  tower-like  constructions.  But  it  is  far  more  sur- 
prising that  they  should  apparently  exhibit  some  degree 
of  intelligence  instead  of  a  mere  blind  instinctive 
impulse,  in  their  manner  of  plugging  up  the  mouths  of 


330  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

their  burrows.    They  act  in  nearly  the  same  manner  as 
would  a  man,  who  had  to  close  a  cylindrical  tube  with 
different  kinds  of  leaves,  petioles,  triangles  of  paper, 
etc.,   for  they   commonly   seize   such   objects   by   their 
pointed  ends.     But  with  thin  objects  a  certain  number 
are  drawn  in  by  their  broader  ends.     They  do  not  act 
in  the  same  unvarying  manner  in  all  cases,  as  do  most 
of  the  lower  animals;  for  instance,  they  do  not  drag 
in  leaves  by  their  foot -stalks,  unless  the  basal  part  of 
the  blade  is  as  narrow  as  the  apex,  or  narrower  than  it. 
When  we  behold   a   wide,   turf-covered   expanse,  we 
should  remember  that  its  smoothness,  on  which  so  much 
of  its  beauty  depends,  is  mainly  due  to  all  the  inequal- 
ities  having  been    slowly   leveled   by    worms.      It   is   a 
marvelous  reflection  that  the  whole  of  the  superficial 
mould  over  any  such  expanse  has  passed,  and  will  again 
pass,  every   few  years   through   the  bodies   of  worms. 
The  plough  is  one  of  the  most  ancient  and  most  valuable 
of  man's  inventions ;  but  long  before  he  existed  the  land 
was  in  fact  regularly  ploughed,  and  still  continues  to 
be  thus  ploughed  by  earth-worms.     It  may  be  doubted 
whether    there    are    many    other    animals    which    have 
played  so  important  a  part  in  the  history  of  the  world, 
as  have  these  lowly  organized  creatures.    Some  other 
animals,  however,  still   more  lowly  organized,  namely 
corals,  have  done  far  more  conspicuous  work  in  having 
constructed  innumerable  reefs  and  islands  in  the  great 
oceans;  but  these  are  almost  confined  to  the  tropical 
zones. 


XXV 

THE  STRUGGLE  FOR  EXISTENCE 

Thomas  H.  Huxley 

When  a  variety  has  arisen,  the  conditions  of  exis- 
tence are  such  as  to  exercise  an  influence  which  is  exactly 
comparable  to  that  of  artificial  selection.  By  con- 
ditions of  existence  I  mean  two  things, — there  are 
conditions  which  are  furnished  by  the  physical,  the 
inorganic  world,  and  there  are  conditions  of  existence 
which  are  furnished  by  the  organic  world.  There  is,  in 
the  first  place.  Climate;  under  that  head  I  include  only 
temperature  and  the  varied  amount  of  moisture  of 
particular  places.  In  the  next  place,  there  is  what  is 
technically  called  Station,  which  means,  given  the 
climate,  the  particular  kind  of  place  in  which  an 
animal  or  plant  lives  or  grows ;  for  example,  the  station 
of  a  fish  is  in  the  water,  of  a  fresh-water  fish  in  fresh 
water;  the  station  of  a  marine  fish  is  in  the  sea,  and  a 
marine  animal  may  have  a  station  higher  or  deeper. 
So  again  with  land  animals :  the  differences  in  their 
stations  are  those  of  different  soils  and  neighborhoods ; 
some  being  best  adapted  to  calcareous,  and  others  to 
an  arenaceous  soil.  The  third  condition  of  existence 
is  Food,  by  which  I  mean  food  in  the  broadest  sense, 
the  supply  of  the  materials  necessary  to  the  existence 
of  an  organic  being ;  in  the  case  of  a  plant  the  inorganic 
matters,  such  as  carbonic  acid,  water,  ammonia,  and 

331 


332  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

the  earthy  salts  or  salines ;  in  the  case  of  the  animal  the 
inorganic  and  organic  matters,  which  we  have  seen  they 
require;  then  these  are  all,  at  least  the  two  first,  what 
we  may  call  the  inorganic   or  physical   conditions   of 
existence.     Food  takes  a  mid-place,  and  then  come  the 
organic   conditions ;  by  which  I   mean   the   conditions 
which  depend  upon  the  state  of  the  rest  of  the  organic 
creation,  upon  the  number  and  kind  of  living  beings, 
with  which  an  animal  is  surrounded.     You  may  class 
these  under  two  heads :   there  are  organic  beings,  which 
operate   as   opponents,   and  there  are   organic   beings 
which  operate  as  helpers  to  any  given  organic  creature. 
The  opponents  may  be  of  two  kinds:    there  are  the 
indirect  opponents,  which  are  what  we  ma}'  call  rivals: 
and  there  are  the  direct  opponents,  those  which  strive  to 
destroy  the  creature;  and  these  we  call  enemies.     By 
rivals  I  mean,  of  course,  in  the  case  of  plants,  thoso 
which  require  for  their  support  the  same  kind  of  soil 
and  station,  and,  among  animals,  those  which  require 
the  same  kind  of  station,  or  food,  or  climate ;  those  are 
the  indirect  opponents ;  the  direct  opponents  are,   of 
course,  those  which  pre}^  upon  an  animal  or  vegetable. 
The    helpers    may    also    be    regarded    as    direct    and 
indirect:     in   the    case   of   a    carnivorous   animal,   for 
example,  a  particular  herbaceous  plant  may  in  multi- 
plying be  an  indirect  helper,  by  enabling  the  herbivora 
on  which  the  carnivore  preys  to  get  more  food,   and 
thus  to  nourish  the   carnivore  more  abundantly ;   the 
direct  helper  may  be  best  illustrated  by  reference  to 
some  parasitic  creature,  such  as  the  tape-worm.     The 
tape-worm  exists  in  the  human  intestines,  so  that  the 
fewer  there  are  of  men  the  fewer  there  will  be  of  tape- 


THE  STRUGGLE  FOR  EXISTENCE      333 

worms,  other  things  being  alike.  It  is  a  humiliating 
reflection,  perhaps,  that  we  may  be  classed  as  direct 
helpers  to  the  tape-worm,  but  the  fact  is  so :  we  can 
all  see  that  if  there  were  no  men  there  would  be  no 
tape-worms. 

It  is  extremely  difficult  to  estimate,  in  a  proper  way, 
the  importance  and  the  working  of  the  conditions  of 
existence.  I  do  not  think  there  Avere  any  of  us  who  had 
the  remotest  notion  of  properly  estimating  them  until 
the  publication  of  Mr.  Darwin's  work,  which  has  placed 
them  before  us  with  remarkable  clearness;  and  I  muse 
endeavor,  as  far  as  I  can  in  my  own  fashion,  to  give 
you  some  notion  of  how  they  work.  We  shall  find  it 
easiest  to  take  a  simple  case,  and  one  as  free  as  possible 
from  every  kind  of  complication. 

I  will  suppose,  therefore,  that  all  the  habitable  part 
of  this  globe — the  dry  land,  amounting  to  about 
51,000,000  square  miles, — I  will  suppose  that  the 
whole  of  that  dry  land  has  the  same  climate,  and 
that  it  is  composed  of  the  same  kind  of  rock  or  soil, 
so  that  there  will  be  the  same  station  everywhere ; 
we  thus  get  rid  of  the  peculiar  influence  of  different 
climates  and  stations.  I  will  then  imagine  that  there 
shall  be  but  one  organic  being  in  the  world,  and  that 
shall  be  a  plant.  In  this  we  start  fair.  Its  food  is  to 
be  carbonic  acid,  water,  and  ammonia,  and  the  saline 
matters  in  the  soil,  which  are,  by  the  supposition,  every- 
where alike.  We  take  one  single  plant,  with  no 
opponents,  no  helpers,  and  no  rivals ;  it  is  to  be  a  "fair 
field,  and  no  favor."  Now,  I  will  ask  you  to  imagine 
further  that  it  shall  be  a  plant  that  shall  produce 
every  year  fifty  seeds,  which  is  a  very  moderate  number 


334  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

for  a  plant  to  produce ;  and  that,  by  the  action  of  the 
winds  and  currents,  these  seeds  shall  be  equally  and 
gradually  distributed  over  the  whole  surface  of  the 
land.  I  want  you  now  to  trace  out  what  will  occur, 
and  you  will  observe  that  I  am  not  talking  faUaciousl}' 
any  more  than  a  mathematician  does  when  he  expounds 
his  problem.  If  j'ou  show  that  the  conditions  of  your 
problem  are  such  as  may  actually  occur  in  nature  and 
do  not  transgi-ess  any  of  the  known  laws  of  nature  in 
working  out  your  proposition,  then  30U  are  as  safe  in 
the  conclusion  you  arrive  at  as  is  the  mathematician  in 
arriving  at  the  solution  of  his  problem.  In  science,  the 
only  way  of  getting  rid  of  the  complications  with  which 
a  subject  of  this  kind  is  environed,  is  to  work  in  this 
deductive  method.  What  will  be  the  result,  then?  I 
will  suppose  that  every  plant  requires  one  square  foot 
of  ground  to  live  upon,  and  the  result  will  be  that,  in  the 
course  of  nine  years,  the  plant  will  have  occupied  every 
single  available  spot  in  the  whole  globe !  I  have  chalked 
upon  the  blackboard  the  figures  by  which  I  arrive  at 
the  result : 

PLANTS  PLANTS 

1  X  50  in  1st  year  =  .50 


50  X  50  "  2nd 

2,500  X   50  "  3rd 

125,000  X  50  "  4th 

6,250,000  X  50  "  6th 

312,500,000  X  50  "  6th 

16,625,000,000  X  50  "  7th 

781,250,000,000  X  50  "  8th 

89,062,500,000,000  X  50  "  9tli 

61,000,000     sq.     miles  — the] 

^^'WI^^Tnr.''^  lu"  ^^""^^  \  =  sq.  ft   1,421,798,400,000,000 
X    27,878,400  —  the    num-  J  ^ 

ber  of  sq.  ft.  in  1  sq.  mile  J 


2,500 

125,000 

6,250,000 

312,600,000 

15,625,000,000 

781,250,000,000 

39,062,500,000,000 

1,953,125,000,000,000 


being  631,326,600,000,000 


THE  STRUGGLE  FOR  EXISTENCE      335 

square  feet  less  than  would  be  required  at  the  end  of 
the  ninth  year. 

You  will  see  from  this  that  at  the  end  of  the  first 
year  the  single  plant  will  have  produced  fifty  more  of 
its  kind;  by  the  end  of  the  second  year  these  will  have 
increased  to  2,500 ;  and  so  on,  in  succeeding  years,  you 
get  beyond  even  trillions ;  and  I  am  not  at  all  sure 
that  I  could  tell  you  what  the  proper  arithmetical 
denomination  of  the  total  number  really  is ;  but,  at  any 
rate,  you  will  understand  the  meaning  of  all  those 
noughts.  Then  you  see  that,  at  the  bottom,  I  have 
taken  the  51,000,000  of  square  miles^  constituting  the 
surface  of  the  dry  land ;  and  as  the  number  of  square 
feet  are  placed  under  and  subtracted  from  the  number 
of  seeds  that  would  be  produced  in  the  ninth  year,  3'ou 
can  see  at  once  that  there  would  be  an  immense  number 
more  of  plants  than  there  would  be  square  feet  of 
ground  for  their  accommodation.  This  is  certainly 
enough  to  prove  my  point ;  that  between  the  eighth  and 
ninth  years  after  being  planted  the  single  plant  would 
have  stocked  the  whole  available  surface  of  the  earth. 

This  is  a  thing  which  is  hardly  conceivable — it  seems 
hardly  imaginable — yet  it  is  so.  It  is  indeed  simply 
the  law  of  Malthus  exemplified.  Mr.  Malthus  was  a 
clergyman,  who  worked  out  this  subject  most  minutely 
and  truthfully  some  years  ago ;  he  showed  quite  clearly 
— and  although  he  was  much  abused  for  his  conclusions 
at  the  time,  they  have  never  yet  been  disproved  and 
never  will  be — ^he  showed  that  in  consequence  of  the 
increase  in  the  number  of  organic  beings  in  a  geometri- 
cal ratio,  while  the  means  of  existence  cannot  be  made  to 
increase  in  the  same  ratio,  that  there  must  come  a  time 


336  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

when  the  number  of  organic  beings  will  be  in  excess  of 
the  power  of  production  of  nutriment,  and  that  thus 
some  check  must  arise  to  the  further  increase  of  those 
organic  beings.  At  the  end  of  the  ninth  year  we  have 
seen  that  each  plant  would  not  be  able  to  get  its  full 
square  foot  of  ground,  and  at  the  end  of  another  year 
it  would  have  to  share  that  space  with  fifty  others,  the 
produce  of  the  seeds  which  it  would  give  off. 

What,  then,  takes  place?  Every  plant  grows  up, 
flourishes,  occupies  its  square  foot  of  ground,  and 
gives  off  its  fifty  seeds ;  but  notice  this,  that  out  of 
this  number  only  one  can  come  to  anything;  there  are 
thus,  as  it  were,  forty-nine  chances  to  one  against  its 
growing  up ;  it  depends  upon  the  most  fortuitous  cir- 
cumstances whether  any  one  of  these  fifty  seeds  shall 
grow  up  and  flourish,  or  whether  it  shall  die  and  perish. 
This  is  what  Mr.  Darwin  has  drawn  attention  to,  and 
called  "The  Struggle  for  Existence" ;  and  I  have  taken 
this  simple  case  of  a  plant  because  some  people  imagine 
that  the  phrase  seems  to  imply  a  sort  of  fight. 

I  have  taken  this  plant  and  shown  you  that  this  is 
the  result  of  the  ratio  of  the  increase,  the  necessary 
result  of  the  arrival  of  the  time  coming  for  every  species 
when  exactly  as  many  members  must  be  destroyed  as 
are  born;  that  is  the  inevitable  ultimate  result  of 
the  rate  of  production.  Now,  what  is  the  result  of  all 
this?  I  have  said  that  there  are  forty-nine  struggling 
against  every  one;  and  it  amounts  to  this,  that  the 
smallest  possible  start  given  to  any  one  seed  may  give 
it  an  advantage  which  will  enable  it  to  get  ahead  of  all 
the  others ;  anything  that  will  enable  any  one  of  these 
seeds  to  germinate  six  hours  before  any  of  the  others 


THE  STRUGGLE  FOR  EXISTENCE      337 

will,  other  things  being  alike,  enable  it  to  choke  them 
out  altogether.  I  have  shown  you  that  there  is  no 
particular  in  which  plants  will  not  vary  from  each 
other;  it  is  quite  possible  that  one  of  our  imaginary 
plants  may  vary  in  such  a  character  as  the  thickness 
of  the  integument  of  its  seeds  ;  it  might  happen  that  one 
of  the  plants  might  produce  seeds  having  a  thinner  integ- 
ument, and  that  would  enable  the  seeds  of  that  plant 
to  germinate  a  little  quicker  than  those  of  any  of  the 
others,  and  those  seeds  would  most  inevitably  extinguish 
the  forty-nine  times  as  many  that  were  struggling  with 
them. 

I  have  put  it  in  this  way,  but  you  see  the  practical 
result  of  the  process  is  the  same  as  if  some  person  had 
nurtured  the  one  and  destroyed  the  other  seeds.  It 
does  not  matter  how  the  variation  is  produced,  so  long 
as  it  is  once  allowed  to  occur.  The  variation  in  the 
plant  once  fairly  started  tends  to  become  hereditary' 
and  reproduce  itself ;  the  seeds  would  spread  themselves 
in  the  same  way  and  take  part  in  the  struggle  with  the 
forty-nine  hundred,  or  forty-nine  thousand,  with  which 
they  might  be  exposed.  Thus,  by  degrees,  this  variety, 
with  some  slight  organic  change  or  modification,  must 
spread  itself  over  the  whole  surface  of  the  habitable 
globe,  and  extirpate  or  replace  the  other  kinds.  That 
is  what  is  meant  by  Natural  Selection;  that  is  the  kind 
of  argument  by  which  it  is  perfectly  demonstrable  that 
the  conditions  of  existence  may  play  exactly  the  same 
part  for  natural  varieties  as  man  does  for  domesticated 
varieties.  No  one  doubts  at  all  that  particular  circum- 
stances may  be  more  favorable  for  one  plant  and  less 
so  for  another,  and  the  moment  you  admit  that,  you 


338  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

admit  the  selective  power  of  nature.  Now,  although  I 
have  been  putting  a  hypothetical  case,  you  must  not 
suppose  that  I  have  been  reasoning  hypothetically. 
There  are  plenty  of  direct  experiments  which  bear  out 
what  we  call  the  theory  of  natural  selection;  there  is 
extremely  good  authority  for  the  statement  that  if  you 
take  the  seed  of  mixed  varieties  of  wheat  and  sow  it, 
collecting  the  seed  next  year  and  sowing  it  again,  at 
length  you  will  find  that  out  of  all  your  varieties  only 
two  or  three  have  lived,  or  perhaps  even  only  one. 
There  were  one  or  two  varieties  which  were  best  fitted  to 
get  on,  and  they  have  killed  out  the  other  kinds  in  just 
the  same  way  and  with  just  the  same  certainty  as  if 
you  had  taken  the  trouble  to  remove  them.  As  I  have 
already  said,  the  operation  of  nature  is  exactly  the 
same  as  the  artificial  operation  of  man. 

But  if  this  be  true  of  that  simple  case,  which  I  put 
before  you,  where  there  is  nothing  but  the  rivalry  of  one 
member  of  a  species  with  others,  what  must  be  the 
operation  of  selective  conditions,  when  you  recollect 
as  a  matter  of  fact,  that  for  every  species  of  animal  or 
plant  there  are  fifty  or  a  hundred  species  which  might 
all,  more  or  less,  be  comprehended  in  the  same  climate, 
food,  and  station;  that  every  plant  has  multitudinous 
animals  which  prey  upon  it,  and  which  are  its  direct 
opponents ;  and  that  these  have  other  animals  preying 
upon  them;  that  every  plant  has  its  indirect  helpers 
in  the  birds  that  scatter  around  its  seeds,  and 
the  animals  that  manure  it  with  their  dung.  I  say,  when 
these  things  are  considered,  it  seems  impossible  that 
any  variation  which  may  arise  in  a  species  in  nature 
should  not  tend  in  some  way  or  other  either  to  be  a 


THE  STRUGGLE  FOR  EXISTENCE      339 

little  better  or  worse  than  the  previous  stock;  if  it  is 
a  little  better,  it  will  have  an  advantage  over  and  tend 
to  extirpate  the  latter  in  this  crush  and  struggle ;  and  if 
it  is  a  little  worse,  it  will  itself  be  extirpated. 

I  know  nothing  that  more  appropriately  expresses 
this,  than  the  phrase,  "the  struggle  for  existence" : 
because  it  brings  before  your  minds,  in  a  vivid  sort  of 
way,  some  of  the  simplest  possible  circumstances  con- 
nected Avith  it.  When  a  struggle  is  intense  there  must 
be  some  who  are  sure  to  be  trodden  down,  crushed,  and 
overpowered  by  others ;  and  there  will  be  some  who  just 
manage  to  get  through  only  by  the  help  of  the  slightest 
accident.  I  recollect  reading  an  account  of  the  famous 
retreat  of  the  French  troops,  under  Napoleon,  from 
Moscow.  Worn  out,  tired,  and  dejected,  they  at  length 
came  to  a  great  river  over  which  there  was  but  one 
bridge  for  the  passage  of  the  vast  army.  Disorganized 
and  demoralized  as  that  army  was,  the  struggle  must 
certainly  have  been  a  terrible  one — every  one  heeding 
only  himself,  and  crushing  through  the  ranks  and  tread- 
ing down  his  fellows.  The  writer  of  the  narrative,  who 
was  himself  one  of  those  who  were  fortunate  enough  to 
succeed  in  getting  over,  and  not  among  the  thousands 
who  were  left  behind  or  forced  into  the  river,  ascribed 
his  escape  to  the  fact  that  he  saw  striding  onward 
through  the  mass  a  great  strong  fellow — one  of  the 
French  Cuirassiers,  who  had  on  a  large  blue  cloak — 
and  he  had  enough  presence  of  mind  to  catch  and  retain 
a  hold  of  this  strong  man's  cloak.  He  says,  "I  caught 
hold  of  his  cloak,  and  although  he  swore  at  me  and 
cut  at  and  struck  me  by  turns,  and  at  last,  when  he 
found  he  could  not  shake  me  off,  fell  to  entreating  me 


34.0  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

to  leave  go  or  I  should  prevent  him  from  escaping, 
besides  not  assisting  myself,  I  still  kept  tight  hold  of 
him,  and  would  not  quit  my  grasp  until  he  had  at  last 
dragged  me  through."  Here  you  see  was  a  case  of 
selective  saving — if  we  ma}"^  so  term  it — depending  for 
its  success  on  the  strength  of  the  cloth  of  the  Cuiras- 
sier's cloak.  It  is  the  same  in  nature ;  every  species  has 
its  bridge  of  Beresina ;  it  has  to  fight  its  way  through 
and  struggle  with  other  species ;  and  when  well  nigh 
overpowered,  it  may  be  that  the  smallest  chance,  some- 
thing in  its  color,  perhaps — the  minutest  circumstance, 
— will  turn  the  scale  one  way  or  the  other. 

Suppose  that  by  a  variation  of  the  black  race  it  had 
produced  the  white  man  at  any  time — you  know  that 
the  Negroes  are  said  to  believe  this  to  have  been  the 
case,  and  to  imagine  that  Cain  was  the  first  white  man, 
and  that  we  are  his  descendants — suppose  that  this 
had  ever  happened,  and  that  the  first  residence  of  this 
human  being  was  on  the  West  Coast  of  Africa.  There 
is  no  great  structural  difference  between  the  white  man 
and  the  Negro,  and  yet  there  is  something  so  singularly 
different  in  the  constitutions  of  the  two,  that  the 
malarias  of  that  country,  which  do  not  hurt  the  black 
at  aU,  cut  off  and  destroy  the  white.  Then  you  see 
there  would  have  been  a  selective  operation  performed ; 
if  the  white  man  had  risen  in  that  way  he  would  have 
been  selected  out  and  removed  by  means  of  the  malaria. 
Now  there  really  is  a  very  curious  case  of  selection  of 
this  sort  among  pigs,  and  it  is  a  case  of  selection  of 
color,  too.  In  the  woods  of  Florida  there  are  a  great 
many  pigs ;  and  it  is  a  very  curious  thing  that  they  are 
all  black,  every  one  of  them.     Professor  Wyman  was 


THE  STRUGGLE  FOR  EXISTENCE     341 

there  some  years  ago,  and  on  noticing  no  pigs  but  these 
black  ones,  he  asked  some  of  the  people  how  it  was  that 
they  had  no  white  pigs,  and  the  reply  was  that  in  the 
woods  of  Florida  there  was  a  root  which  they  called  the 
Paint  Root,  and  that  if  the  white  pigs  were  to  eat  any 
of  it,  it  had  the  effect  of  making  their  hoofs  crack,  and 
they  died;  but  if  the  black  pigs  ate  any  of  it,  it  did 
not  hurt  them  at  all.  Here  was  a  very  simple  case  of 
natural  selection.  A  skillful  breeder  could  not  more 
carefully  develop  the  black  breed  of  pigs,  and  weed  out 
all  the  white  pigs,  than  the  Paint  Root  does. 

To  show  you  how  remarkably  indirect  may  be  such 
natural  selective  agencies  as  I  have  referred  to,  I  will 
conclude  by  noticing  a  case  mentioned  by  Mr.  Darwin, 
and  which  is  certainly  one  of  the  most  curious  of  its 
kind.  It  is  that  of  the  Humble-Bee.  It  has  been 
noticed  that  there  are  a  great  many  more  humble-bees 
in  the  neighborhood  of  towns,  than  out  in  the  open 
country ;  and  the  explanation  of  the  matter  is  this :  the 
humble-bees  build  nests,  in  which  they  store  their  honey 
and  deposit  the  larva?  and  eggs.  The  field  mice  are 
amazingly  fond  of  honey  and  larvje ;  therefore,  wherever 
there  are  plenty  of  field  mice,  as  in  the  country,  the 
humble-bees  are  kept  down ;  but  in  the  neighborhood  of 
towns,  the  number  of  cats  which  prowl  about  the  fields 
eat  up  the  field  mice,  and  of  course  the  more  mice  they 
eat  up  the  less  there  are  to  prey  upon  the  larva?  of  the 
bees — ^the  cats  are  therefore  the  indirect  helpers  of  the 
bees.*     Coming  back  a  step  farther  we  may  say  that 

*  The  humble-bees,  on  the  other  hand,  are  direct  helpers  of  some  plants, 
such  as  the  heartsease  and  red  clover,  which  are  fertilized  by  the  visits  of 
the  bees;  and  they  are  indirect  helpers  of  the  numerous  insects  which  are 
more  or  less  completely  supported  by  the  heartsease  and  red  clover. — 
Atdhor's  Note. 


342  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

the  old  maids  are  also  indirect  friends  of  the  humble- 
bees,  and  indirect  enemies  of  the  field  mice,  as  they 
keep  the  cats  which  eat  up  the  latter.  This  is  an  illus- 
tration somewhat  beneath  the  dignity  of  the  subject, 
perhaps,  but  it  occurs  to  me  in  passing,  and  with  it  I 
will  conclude  this  lecture. 


XXVI 

ELECTRICITY  ADVANCING  FARM 
PROSPERITY  * 

James  Burton 

It  is  a  curious  thing  that  farming,  which  is  so  all- 
important  to  the  very  life  of  the  nation,  should  have 
lagged  so  far  behind  in  introducing  labor-saving  devices 
in  its  manifold  activities.  It  is  only  recently  that  even 
a  fraction  of  the  attention  given  to  manufacturing  ef- 
ficiency has  been  paid  to  improving  farm  methods.  Per- 
haps the  chief  factor  which  has  played  a  part  in  such 
improvement  has  been  the  widespread  development  of 
electricity.  City  life  is  inconceivable  without  electricity 
and  the  time  is  rapidly  approaching  when  the  farmer 
cannot  conduct  his  life  and  activities  without  all  the 
aid  which  modern  electrical  science  has  placed  at  his 
disposal. 

Probably  the  first  consideration  in  installing  elec- 
trical devices  on  the  farm  is  the  source  of  electric  cur- 
rent. Now  that  electric  power  is  being  so  generally 
used  and  is  therefore  being  distributed  over  wide  areas, 
it  is  usually  possible  for  all  except  the  most  isolated 
farmers  to  obtain  it  from  a  central  power  station.  This 
should  be  done  whenever  possible,  as  it  is  the  less 
expensive  way  and  the  most  satisfactory  from  every 
point  of  view.     There  is  a  minimum  charge  for  service, 

*  From  Export,  American  Industries,  by  permission. 

343 


344  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

the  cost  of  maintenance  and  upkeep  is  eliminated  and 
the  amount  of  power  is  not  limited  as  it  is  in  an  isolated 
plant  set  up  on  an  individual  farm.  In  almost  every 
case,  if  comparison  is  made  in  costs  of  getting  power 
even  from  a  distant  station  and  in  generating  it  on  the 
farm,  the  advantage  is  distinctly  in  favor  of  the  former 
method.  If  the  isolated  plant  is  absolutely  unavoidable, 
an  expert  should  be  consulted  who  will  make  a  survey 
of  the  conditions  under  which  the  plant  will  have  to 
work  and  install  a  system  which  will  be  most  practicable 
for  the  demands  upon  it.  Cheapness  should  not  be 
made  the  primary  consideration  when  setting  up  a 
power  plant,  because  in  the  long  run  the  more  expensive 
equipment  pays  for  itself,  and  especially  if  the  added 
expense  has  gone  into  increased  equipment,  future  needs 
and  expansion  are  thereby  provided  for. 

Once  supplied  with  electric  power,  by  whatev  ^r  means 
it  Is  secured,  the  application  of  electricity  to  the  farm 
is  almost  unlimited.  In  the  dairy,  electricity  can  be 
used  to  run  the  milking  machines  which  are  being 
employed  more  and  more  to  meet  the  needs  of  modern 
sanitation.  In  every  case  where  such  machines  have 
been  installed  they  have  brought  about  a  saving  in  labor 
costs  and  economy  in  method.  Two  or  three  men  can 
do  the  work  which  formerly  required  eight  or  ten,  and 
a  great  deal  more  speed  is  possible  than  by  the  old 
method.  Electricity  can  be  applied  to  about  twenty 
other  dairy  uses  In  addition  to  the  milking  machines. 
Cream  separators  and  pasteurizers  can  be  motor  driven, 
and  churns,  bottle  and  can  washers  are  other  devices 
which  can  be  most  advantageously  run  by  electricitj'. 

Refrigerating  plants,  so  very  necessary  on  the  farm 


ELECTRICITY  345 

when  ice  is  not  available,  and  preferable  to  natural  ice 
cooling  in  any  case,  can  be  ideally  operated  by  elec- 
tricity. Such  a  plant  can  be  made  automatic,  thus 
regulating  the  refrigeration  to  order.  Ice  cutting  is 
done  away  with ;  the  space  formerly  occupied  by  ice 
can  be  used  for  store  rooms  and  the  cooling  or  cold 
storage  is  accomplished  with  the  minimum  of  time, 
effort,  and  cost. 

One  of  the  most  important  applications  of  power  to 
farm  uses  is  that  of  the  water  pump.  A  one  or  two 
horse  power  motor  will  usually  supply  all  the  water 
needed  for  the  farm  and  dairy  and  the  pumping  equip- 
ment can  easily  be  made  automatic  so  that  no  attention 
need  be  paid  to  it  except  to  oil  it  at  frequent  intervals. 

Barn  and  field  machinery  can  be  run  by  electricity  to 
excellent  advantage.  Feed  grinders,  corn  shellers, 
ensilage  cutters,  grain  elevators,  threshers  and  graders, 
hay  hoists  and  balers,  and  a  dozen  other  of  the  neces- 
sary farm  engines  are  capable  of  electric  application. 
By  installing  a  motor  at  a  central  point,  it  can  often  be 
made  to  operate  several  machines  simultaneously  or,  if 
power  is  limited,  various  different  machines  which  are 
not  used  at  the  same  time. 

Recently  some  interesting  experiments  have  been 
made  in  the  use  of  electricity  in  the  chicken  business. 
Incubators  and  brooders  can  be  kept  warm  by  electric 
heat,  and  it  is  even  said  that  hens  can  be  induced  to 
lay  more  frequently  and  regularly  if  kept  in  properly 
lighted  hen  houses,  certainly  a  most  useful  application 
of  the  ever-useful  electric  light. 

In  the  farm  work,  a  small  motor  to  operate  grind- 
stones,  saws,   drills,   and  blowers   is   very   useful,   and 


346  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

electric  soldering  irons  and  glue  pots  can  be  utilized  in 
many  ways  of  great  value. 

The  advantages  of  electricity  in  the  farm  home  are 
much  the  same  as  in  a  city  home,  but  are  perhaps  more 
appreciated  in  the  country  because  the  demands  upon 
the  housewife's  time  are  so  much  greater  and  the  work 
she  does  is  so  much  heavier  than  that  of  her  city  cousin. 
Now  that  domestic  help  is  so  difficult  to  secure,  even 
in  the  cities,  and  much  more  so  in  the  country,  the  farm 
woman  must  depend  more  and  more  upon  herself  and 
she  will  welcome  any  lightening  of  her  labors  that  can 
be  effected  by  electrical  devices.  Bread  mixers,  vacuum 
cleaners,  washing  machines,  sewing  machines,  and  water 
pumps  are  some  of  the  most  popular  and  labor-saving 
electrical  appliances  for  the  farm  home. 

These  are  but  a  few  of  the  many  uses  to  which  elec- 
tricity ma}'  be  put  on  the  farm,  but  they  are  enough  to 
indicate  its  varied  and  widespread  applications.  The 
cost — always  an  important  item — is  small  in  com- 
parison with  the  results  accomplished.  The  low  costs 
of  electricity  are  amazing  in  any  case.  Electric  light 
is  one  of  the  few  things  which  has  decreased  in  cost  in 
the  last  few  years,  and  the  same  is  true,  in  lesser  degree, 
of  other  forms  of  electricity.  When  one  stops  to  con- 
sider that,  at  current  rates,  one  cent's  worth  of  elec- 
tricity will  operate  a  six-pound  flatiron  for  fifteen  min- 
utes, drive  an  electric  vacuum  cleaner  long  enough  to 
clean  four  hundred  and  fifty  square  feet  of  carpet,  run  a 
sewing  machine  or  a  twelve-inch  fan  for  two  hours,  life 
one  hundred  gallons  of  water  one  hundred  feet,  run  a 
buffer  and  grinder  for  one  and  a  quarter  hours,  or  do 
■a  washer  full  of  washing,  the  cost  shrinks  into  insignif- 


ELECTRICITY  347 

icance  and  the  advantages  appear  inestimable.  Then, 
too,  there  is  always  this  to  be  remembered,  that  the 
electric  motor  consumes  power  only  when  in  actual 
operation  and  in  direct  proportion  to  the  amount  of 
work  done.  There  is,  therefore,  no  Avaste  or  extrava- 
gance involved. 

A  description  of  a  model  farm,  so  far  as  electric 
installation  is  concerned,  will  show  the  practical  uses 
to  which  electricity  may  be  put.  This  farm  is  in  Iowa 
and  in  many  waj-s  is  typical  of  the  Middle  Western 
farm.  The  buildings  are  all  new  and  of  modern  con- 
struction and  are  electrically  lighted  throughout.  Over 
the  door  of  the  garage  is  a  lamp  which  lights  the  walks 
from  house  to  barns  and  which  can  be  controlled  from 
four  points.  This  does  away  with  the  use  of  the 
lantern  as  the  light  can  be  turned  on  before  leaving  the 
house  and  upon  reaching  the  barn.  In  the  main  barn 
there  is  a  seven  and  a  half  horse-power  motor  which 
drives  a  feed  mill.  This  mill  is  practically  automatic, 
as  long  as  experience  has  shown  just  where  to  set  the 
slide  gate  in  the  feed  chute  so  that  the  mill  receives  the 
proper  amount  of  unground  oats  or  corn  and  it  can 
be  therefore  run  without  any  attention.  Near  the  feed- 
mill  is  a  one  horse-power  motor  belted  to  a  shaft 
formerly  driven  by  a  wind-mill.  This  shaft  runs  out- 
doors to  a  pump  which  delivers  water  to  a  concrete 
tank  from  which  pipes  lead  to  the  various  watering- 
troughs  for  the  stock.  One  of  these  troughs  is  placed 
in  the  wall  of  the  stock  shed  so  that  it  can  be  reached 
from  without  or  within.  To  prevent  the  water  in  the 
outside  trough  from  freezing  in  cold  weather,  a  small 
electric  immersion  heater  has  been  installed  which  keeps 


348  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

the  water  above  the  freezing  point  and  ready  to  drink. 
This  device  saves  a  great  deal  of  work.  There  is  a 
motor-driven  feed  cutter  that  prepares  feed  directly 
for  use  and  does  away  with  the  need  for  storing  ground 
feed  in  large  quantities. 

In  the  house  there  are  electrical  devices  too,  as  the 
modern  equipment  is  not  confined  to  the  farm  equip- 
ment alone.  There  is  a  very  complete  electric  lighting 
system  and  a  plumbing  installation  supplied  by  a  small 
rotary  pump.  This  pump  delivers  water  into  a  concrete 
pressure  tank.  In  the  laundry  there  is  a  combined 
washing  machine  and  wringer  driven  by  a  small  motor. 
The  kitchen  also  has  various  electric  devices.  Not 
only  are  there  the  more  usual  devices  such  as  an  elec- 
tric iron,  a  vacuum  cleaner,  and  a  sewing  machine 
motor,  but  an  electric  cooking  range,  with  three  burners 
on  top  and  an  oven  underneath.  This  range  keeps  the 
kitchen  cool  in  summer  and  is  useful  in  the  winter  if 
fuel  for  the  coal  range  runs  short  or  the  fire  goes  out. 

This  farm  has  320  acres,  on  which  about  150  head  of 
cattle  and  300  hogs  are  fed.  With  the  aid  of  the  various 
electrical  devices  it  is  possible  for  the  owner  to  take 
care  of  the  stock  in  winter  with  the  aid  of  one  boy  and 
in  the  summer  to  concentrate  on  the  purely  productive 
work  of  the  farm.  The  electric  bills  run  about  ten 
dollars  a  month,  a  very  low  figure  considering  the 
amount  of  power  and  light  used. 

Electricity  is  undoubtedly  the  motive  power  of  the 
future  not  only  on  the  farm,  but  in  every  phase  of 
existence  where  power  is  needed.  To  supply  himself 
with  it  now  only  means  that  the  farmer  is  anticipating 
his  future  needs  besides  providing  the  most  desirable 


ELECTRICITY  34'J 

solution  for  all  the  present  problems  which  have  seemed 
so  difficult  on  account  of  lack  of  suitable  power  facil- 
ities. Electricity  can  do  much  to  lighten  the  daily 
toil — the  sunrise-to-sunset  ceaseless  labor  which  has 
always  been  characteristic  of  farm  work.  In  fact,  it 
almost  seems  to  be  the  panacea  for  all  the  troubles  of 
the  farmer.  Farming  accomplished  by  the  touch  of  an. 
electric  button  seems  a  fairy  tale,  but  who  knows  what 
the  future  may  bring  forth?  Going  back  to  the  land 
may  soon  be  the  most  desirable  thing  in  the  world 
instead  of  the  worst,  as  sundry  disgruntled  farmers 
would  have  had  us  believe  in  the  past. 


XXVII 

THE  GASOLINE  ENGINE  ON  THE   FARM* 

Xeno  W.  Putnam 

The  world  is  asking  for  bread  and  the  farmer  must 
supply  it.  For  that  purpose  he  cultivates  his  lands. 
The  call  of  the  farmer  is  for  efficient  helpers.  There 
is  a  scarcity  of  workmen  which  is  hampering  him  at 
every  turn.  It  required  50,000  acres,  some  one  has 
figured,  to  supply  the  meager  necessities  of  a  single 
savage,  but  less  than  twenty-five  acres  are  available  to 
supply  the  more  exacting  demands  of  each  citizen 
to-day.  Intensive  culture  alone  can  meet  the  demand; 
more  work  and  better  work  on  every  available  acre,  and 
the  call  for  extra  helpers  which  cannot  be  answered  with 
men  must  be  met  by  machinery.  The  farmer  of  the 
future  must  be  a  mechanic  rather  than  a  day  laborer. 
He  will  have  time  for  little  but  the  intellectual  part  of 
soil-tilling,  while  the  manual  labor  will  more  and  more 
of  it  be  done  with  wheels  and  levers.  Hand  labor  was 
long  ago  dispensed  with  in  the  mill  and  factory 
wherever  possible  because  it  is  more  expensive  than  the 
factory  can  afford.  The  farmer  has  adhered  to  the 
harder  and  more  costly  method  and  has  performed 
work  manually  that  some  adequate  farm  power  might 
have  done  better  and  cheaper. 

*  From  "The  Gasoline  Engine  on  the  Farm,"  by  permission  of  The 
Norman  W.  Henley  Pub.  Co. 

350 


THE  GASOLINE  ENGINE  351 

Many  devices  that  might  have  reduced  the  labor  of 
the  farmer  have  never  been  placed  upon  the  market, 
because  all  farm  machinery  formerly  had  to  be  re- 
stricted to  the  limits  of  the  horse  in  power  and  speed. 
In  this  respect  the  farm  implement  designer  has  been 
more  seriously  hampered  than  any  other  class  of  inven- 
tors. Without  the  aid  of  steam  and  electricity  our 
factories  would  still  be  in  their  infancy.  How  much 
the  world  has  lost  through  its  most  important  industry, 
agriculture,  because  of  this  unfortunate  limit  placed 
upon  her  field  appliances  can  only  be  guessed  at. 
Many  valuable  inventions  have  been  abandoned  because 
they  had  to  be  made  too  light  or  too  slow  for  effective 
work,  in  order  that  they  might  be  handled  by  the 
ordinary  farm  team. 

The  call  of  the  farm  is  for  power ;  some  means  by 
which  the  intelligence  of  a  single  man  can  direct  a  force 
that  will  do  as  much  work  as  a  dozen  or  a  hundred 
men  could  do  with  their  unaided  hands.  Farming  has 
indeed  advanced  from  the  plane  of  simply  making  a 
living  to  that  of  a  great  commercial  project.  From 
plowing  to  shelling,  it  takes  four  and  one  half  hours' 
work  to  raise  one  bushel  of  corn  by  hand.  Machinery 
and  power  reduce  this  to  forty-one  minutes.  The  same 
commercial  arguments  which  demand  power  in  the  fac- 
tory render  it  even  more  necessary  upon  the  farm. 

Various  forms  of  farm  power  have  been  tried  and 
have  failed.  The  tread-mill  was  not  a  real  power,  but  a 
clumsy  means  of  transmitting  the  limited  energy  of 
some  animal.  It  was  unsteady,  hard  to  operate,  and 
soon  became  a  synonym  for  drudgery.  Sweep  power  is 
hard  to  move,  cumbersome,  and  usually  required  the 


352  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

exposure  of  its  operators  to  every  storm.  The  water- 
wheel  is  of  very  restricted  application.  It  may  easily  fail 
in  dry  weather  and,  at  best,  cannot  be  moved  about. 
Wind  mills  are  objectionable  for  the  same  reason;  also 
from  the  unreliable  nature  of  their  motive  force.  Steam 
alone  has  been  the  only  serious  competitor  of  the  horse 
in  general  farm  work;  still  it  is  not  by  any  means  the 
ideal  farm  power. 

Much  of  the  farmer's  work  is  done  in  short  runs  and 
at  many  different  places.  His  ideal  power  nmst  be 
ready  at  a  moment's  notice  and  must  not  cost  anything 
to  maintain  except  while  in  use.  It  must  be  safe,  re- 
liable, easy  to  operate  and  portable;  not  easily  dis- 
turbed b}'^  weather  conditions ;  available  at  any  place, 
indoors  or  out.  Electricity  might  avail  for  all  of  this 
excepting  portability,  were  it  more  generally  to  be  ob- 
tained upon  the  farm.  It  usually  is  not,  unless  pro- 
duced by  the  borrowed  energy  of  steam  or  gasoline 
engine  at  a  good  deal  of  waste  in  transmission  or  in 
transforming  mechanical  to  electrical  energy. 

The  gasoline  engine  is  the  only  power  at  the  present 
time  that  has  answered  all  of  these  various  demands.  It 
is  a  wonderfully  flexible  power,  adapting  itself  to  all 
conditions.  While  the  teams  are  being  fed  the  engine 
may  be  started  upon  a  day's  run  at  the  feed  mill,  then 
the  operator  is  free  to  go  back  to  breakfast.  No  fuel  is 
used,  as  is  the  case  with  a  steam  boiler,  while  steam  is 
raised.  The  operator  needs  no  greater  mechanical 
training  than  should  be  considered  necessary  to  prop- 
erly run  a  binder.  If  power  is  needed  in  the  kitchen  to 
operate  the  washing  machine  two  men  can  pick  the 
engine  up  and  take  it  there.    If  wanted  in  the  farthest 


THE  GASOLINE  ENGINE  353 

corner  of  the  wood  lot  it  can  be  set  on  the  farm  wagon 
and  conveyed  there  without  the  necessity  of  a  second  or 
third  trip  for  water  tank  and  fuel;  neither  is  there  a 
trail  of  feed-wires  to  erect.  The  driest  and  calmest 
weather  does  not  disturb  it,  nor  does  it  break  away  from 
its  moorings  in  the  fiercest  wind.  It  can  be  obtained  in 
one  fourth  horsepower  sizes  if  required,  while  five  thou- 
sand horsepower  engines  are  in  successful  operation. 
It  works  properly  in  zero  weather  or  excessive  heat  and 
functions  no  matter  what  the  mercury  registers. 

The  most  convincing  argument  in  the  world  is 
achievement.  Let  us  see  what  the  gasoline  engine  has 
actually  done;  what  it  is  now  doing  on  the  farm.  In 
parts  of  the  West  where  best  known,  it  is  driving  the 
steam  tractor  from  the  field ;  is  plowing,  harrowing,  and 
seeding  all  in  one  operation,  by  the  square  mile  instead 
of  by  the  acre,  and  is  doing  the  work  better,  as  well  as 
quicker  and  cheaper,  than  horsepower  can  do  it.  It  is 
harvesting  the  grain  when  the  fields  are  too  soft  to 
carry  the  ordinary  binder  and  when  the  steam  tractor 
would  be  helpless ;  then,  after  threshmg,  it  is  conveying 
a  part  to  market  and  converting  the  balance  into  the 
most  available  form  for  feeding  cattle.  It  is  loading 
hay  in  the  fields  and  then  unloading  it  in  the  barns  or 
placing  it  in  stacks.  Without  fear  of  hunger  or  thirst, 
it  turns  away  from  its  source  of  supplies  and  requires 
no  procession  of  fuel  and  water  wagons  to  follow  upon 
its  trail.  If  the  season  is  short  or  the  weather  threaten- 
ing, it  turns  the  night  into  day  with  its  own  headlight 
and  lives  its  working  life  in  twenty-four  hour  days  as 
cheerfully  as  in  periods  of  eight  or  ten.  Where  neces- 
sary it  has  run  without  stopping  from  Monday  morn- 


354  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

ing  till  Saturday  night  with  hardly  an  hour's  attention 
during  the  entire  time. 

The  gasoline  engine  is  irrigating  fields  and  putting 
on  the  finishing  touches  of  success  where  drought  and 
failure  threatened.  It  is  annually  saving  to  the  world 
thousands  of  dollars'  worth  of  fruit  from  the  ravages  of 
fungus  and  insect.  It  is  digging  the  farmer's  post- 
holes  ;  it  is  cutting  his  wood  and  hauling  it  to  the  sheds. 
It  is  taking  out  of  farm  life  much  of  that  drudgery 
which  destroys  human  life  more  through  dreariness  than 
through  expended  energy.  Perhaps  its  greatest  value 
is  in  the  every-day  humble  occupations,  and  from  these 
it  never  shirks. 

Unlike  the  general  run  of  labor-saving  instruments, 
the  work  of  the  gasoline  engine  is  not  completed  in  the 
field.  It  runs  the  washer  and  wringer  for  the  housewife 
with  ease,  pumps  the  water  for  her,  does  the  churning, 
skims  the  milk,  and  has  even  been  known  to  sweep  the 
floor,  clean  the  carpet,  wash  the  windows  and  the  dinner 
dishes.  In  numberless  ways,  after  doing  the  heavy  field 
work,  it  has  lightened  the  burden  for  some  tired  or  semi- 
invalid  housewife  and  added  that  touch  of  leisure  or  of 
beauty  to  the  house  or  lawn  so  dear  to  the  heart  of  the 
farm  girl. 

Between  the  gasoline  engine  and  the  boys  of  the  farm 
there  seems  to  be  a  special  bond  of  sympathy  that  re- 
moves from  the  latter  those  terrors  of  wood-pile  and 
grindstone  that  drove  his  older  brother  from  the  farm. 
It  silences  the  call  of  the  city  by  rendering  farm  life 
the  more  attractive  of  the  two.  The  boy  is  progressive 
unless  his  ambition  is  crushed  out  with  hard  work.  His 
school  life  feeds  his  ambition  and  the  farm  must  either 


THE  GASOLINE  ENGINE  355 

keep  up  with  his  love  of  progress  or  he  will  grow  away 
from  it.  The  engine  is  the  boy's  confidant  and  friend, 
for  it  develops  in  him  that  love  of  machinery  upon  which 
are  based  the  world's  achievements. 

Modem  farm  work  has  outgrown  the  capacities  of  a 
single  pair  of  hands.  The  hired  man  is  a  necessity ;  but 
where  the  number  of  places  needing  him  is  greatly  in 
excess  of  the  supply  of  desirable  men,  it  is  but  natural 
that  the  farm  which  is  best  equipped  for  the  elimination 
of  drudgery  is  most  attractive  to  the  most  progressive 
men.  The  engine  is  making  it  more  desirable  by  making 
it  more  efficient,  by  shifting  the  drudgery  of  physical 
routine  to  the  alertness  of  applied  intelligence ;  for 
drudgery  always  dulls  the  intellect  and  produces  the 
lowest  form  of  efficiency. 

The  gasoline  engine  has  done  all  this ;  it  is  doing  still 
more.  Many  of  to-day's  important  industrial  problems 
originate  upon  the  farm  and  depend  upon  its  produc- 
tiveness, its  extension,  and  its  life  for  their  solution.  As 
the  proportion  of  workers  remaining  on  the  farm  be- 
comes less,  their  importance  to  those  who  have  left  it 
becomes  greater,  and  nothing  raises  the  standard  of 
civilization  in  any  community  so  quickly  as  a  decrease 
in  the  cost  of  power ;  a  conserving  of  human  life  by  sur- 
rounding its  workers  with  better  conditions,  which  have 
been  robbed  of  drudgery  and  no  longer  dwarf  the  intel- 
lectual man.  The  highest  form  of  conservation  applies 
to  the  world's  men  and  women  more  than  to  her  raw 
material.  Manual  labor  has  become  too  slow  and  it 
accomplishes  too  little;  it  cannot  keep  up  with  the  de- 
mand. The  only  true  economy  in  the  use  of  human 
energy  lies  in  putting  it  to  some  more  productive  work 


356  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

than  that  which  a  machine  can  do  as  well  and  twent}' 
times  as  fast.  The  true  place  for  the  man  himself  is  at 
the  controlling  lever,  where  more  than  automatic  ma- 
chine action  is  needed  and  where  human  intelligence 
rules  supreme.  This  wonderfully  universal  and  flexible 
power  is  placing  the  modern  farmer's  work  on  a  higher 
plane  and  is  turning  former  hit-or-miss  methods  of 
farming  into  a  definite  science. 

In  its  one  expression,  the  automobile,  it  has  given 
farm  intelligence  its  rightful  place  in  the  social  world. 
It  has  broken  down  the  false  and  undesirable  social 
barriers  that  formerly  existed  between  town  and  coun- 
try life  and  which,  in  a  great  measure,  have  been  re- 
sponsible for  the  unpopularity  of  farm  life  among  both 
city  and  country  young  people.  To-day  the  best 
schools  and  lecture  halls  are  placed  within  reach  of  the 
farm  door,  and  country  youth,  surrounded  at  last  by 
environments  it  craved,  has  made  the  most  of  them. 
After  the  hour  of  intellectual  enj  oyment  they  return  to 
the  farm  still  loyal  to  it,  but  with  new  ideals  and  a 
broader  appreciation  of  life. 

The  farm  house  itself,  stripped  of  its  atmosphere  of 
drudgery  and  grinding  toil,  becomes  an  actual  home 
where  culture  is  no  longer  impossible.  Out  of  the  added 
leisure  springs  an  influence  of  affection  and  respect  that 
makes  the  man  live  a  better  life  because  of  the  home  life 
from  which  the  boy  received  his  training. 


OUR  FOREFATHERS  AND  FARMING 


XXVIII 

THE  RURAL  SOCRATES* 

H.   C.   HiRZEL 

It  is  no  longer  a  controvertible  point,  whether  the 
science  of  agriculture  merits  the  distinguished  attention 
of  philosophical  minds,  and  is  the  proper  study  of  the 
most  enlarged  understanding ;  since  the  proof  is  beyond 
contradiction,  that  a  judicious  rural  economy  is  one  of 
the  chief  supports  of  the  prosperity  of  a  State.  We 
every  day  see  instances  in  common  life,  where  the  hap- 
piest disposition,  most  informed  genius,  superior  talents, 
scientific  knowledge,  even  probity  and  virtue,  become 
useless,  and  are  lost  in  the  wreck  of  their  possessor's 
fortune,  if  he  omits  to  regulate  his  domestic  affairs  by 
the  rules  of  a  wise  and  prudent  economy.  The  same 
observation  may  be  extended  to  the  wisest  systems  of 
legislature,  and  the  best  political  institutions,  which 
lose  their  efficacy,  and  are  incapable  of  defending  a 
State  from  absolute  ruin,  unless  a  general  scheme  of 
economy,  sensibly  executed,  provides  for  the  sub- 
sistence of  the  people;  either  by  finding  within  itself 
those  productions  requisite  to  the  support  of  indi- 
viduals, or  exciting  a  spirit  of  industry  to  exchange  with 
foreign  nations  the  produce  of  manufactories,  for  the 
necessaries  of  life.     There  is  something  so  seducing  to 

*  From  "Rural  Economy."  "The  Rural  Socnat«s,"  menioirs  of  a 
country  philosopher,  was  published  in  the  German  and  the  French  in  tho 
18th  century. 

359 


360  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

the  Imagination  in  this  last  method,  that  there  is  danger 
of  suffering  ourselves  to  be  deceived,  in  giving  it  a  pref- 
erence to  the  former.  Through  the  medium  of  com- 
merce, manufactures  invite  into  the  country,  where 
they  flourish,  not  only  the  necessaries  of  life,  but  every 
superfluity  of  wealth  and  luxury.  However  parsi- 
monious the  hand  of  Nature  may  have  been  to  such  a 
country,  it  soon  becomes  more  affluent  than  the  most 
fertile  soils,  and  increases  in  power  and  population 
almost  miraculously.  Yet,  if  agriculture  remains  neg- 
lected, all  these  advantages  will  be  fluctuating  and  un- 
certain ;  while,  on  the  contrary,  where  that  is  considered 
as  the  first  object  of  national  attention,  it  conducts 
directly  and  invariably  to  the  end  desired,  without  ex- 
posing us  to  the  caprice  of  fortune.  A  State  that 
amply  produces  the  sustenance  of  its  inhabitants  from 
its  own  bowels,  has,  at  least,  the  advantage  of  inde- 
pendency ;  while  the  richest  nation,  when  obliged  to  have 
recourse  to  the  assistance  of  foreigners  for  the  neces- 
saries of  life,  submits  to  all  the  vicissitudes  of  unfore- 
seen events ;  and,  in  many  instances,  must  be  sub- 
servient to  the  cordial  or  unfriendly  disposition  of  its 
neighbors. 

Though  the  pride  and  absurdity  of  polite  people 
have  affected  to  treat  it  with  ridicule  and  contempt,  and 
even  to  degrade  its  followers  as  a  very  inferior  race  of 
beings ;  yet  to  speak  of  husbandmen  as  a  society,  they 
are,  perhaps,  more  deserving  of  philosophical  con- 
sideration and  inspection,  than  any  other  society  in  the 
world !  In  the  country,  humanity  presents  itself  to  our 
view,  in  a  state  of  innocent  simplicity,  resembling,  in 
some  degree,  the  state  of  nature.     The  distinct  facul- 


THE  RURAL  SOCRATES  361 

ties  and  properties  of  the  soul  may  be  analyzed  with 
greater  ease,  as  they  are  less  disguised  and  oppressed 
with  a  tinsel  parade  of  artificial  ornaments.  A  chain 
of  reflection  instructed  me  in  this  great  truth,  that 
intrinsic  magnanimity  of  soul  is  unconfined  to  rank; 
and  that  the  meanest  condition  furnishes  instances  of 
exalted  sentiment  and  understanding,  capable  of  con- 
tributing to  the  general  good  of  the  community.  I  was 
likewise  convinced  that  in  all  situations  the  conscious- 
ness of  a  rational  application  of  our  talents,  the  recti- 
tude and  integrity  of  our  actions,  are  the  sources  of 
that  pure  and  tranquil  joy  which  is  the  constant  result 
and  reward  of  virtue.  Mankind  is  the  same  in  all  na- 
tions: the  different  gradations  of  genius  are  equally 
discernible  in  the  cottage  and  the  palace.  I  could  trace 
among  plowmen,  the  character  of  a  Lycurgus,  a 
Socrates,  a  Plato,  a  Homer,  and  a  Lucian !  Nor  ought 
T  to  conceal,  that  the  marks  of  vice  were  sometimes  to 
be  met  with.  The  apparent  distinction  between  these 
rustics  and  the  fashionable  part  of  the  world  seems  to 
consist  in  the  objects,  not  degree,  of  ratiocination.  The 
country  is  the  proper  school  for  acquiring  a  more  inti- 
mate knowledge  of  human  nature:  for  forming  just 
ideas  of  happiness,  and  for  discerning  what  con- 
stitutes the  true  greatness  of  man.  Here  I  learned  to 
despise  the  ridiculous  vanity  of  those  literary  geniuses, 
who  fancy  their  extensive  erudition  places  them  in  a 
superior  order  of  beings ;  where,  it  is  evident,  their 
understanding  is  frequently  clouded  with  prejudices, 
and  their  will,  a  slave  to  the  dominion  of  the  passions. 
This  vanity,  the  excrescence  of  knowledge,  is  as  con- 
temptible  as    it   is    apparent   to    the   eyes   of  a   true 


362  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

philosopher.  My  sentiments  now  became  more  en- 
larged; all  the  disadvantageous  descriptions  of  the 
manners  and  genius  of  those  we  call  savages  grew  sus- 
pected, and  I  lamented  our  deficiency  in  relations  of 
traveling  philosophers,  capable  of  investigating  the 
secret  recesses  of  the  human  heart,  and  contemplating 
the  progress  of  nature,  in  her  uncultivated  oiTspring, 
with  judicious  and  impartial  observation.  I  am  per- 
suaded such  remarks  would  throw  new  light  on  our 
enquiries  into  the  different  degrees  of  perfection  in  the 
intellectual  faculty,  and  furnish  the  friends  of  human 
nature  with  materials  for  admiration  and  gratitude  to 
the  wisdom  and  goodness  of  the  Creator  in  the  order 
and  disposition  of  His  creatures.  We  should  find  that 
those  nations  whom  we  brand  as  savage,  might,  with 
much  more  propriety,  retort  the  appellation  on  their 
polite  guests,  who  forcibly  dispossess  them  of  wealth 
and  liberty  !  Nor  should  we  have  any  remaining  doubts, 
whether  those  among  them,  who  have  participated  of  the 
manners  and  sciences  of  the  Europeans,  act  conform- 
ably to  sense,  in  seizing  the  first  opportunity,  with 
eagerness,  of  returning  to  the  simple  and  rational  life 
of  their  countrymen ! 

After  the  preference  I  have  given  to  a  rural  life,  in 
regard  to  the  agreeable,  as  well  as  the  useful  part,  I 
trust  the  world  will  not  condemn  me,  if,  in  those  hours 
of  relaxation  which  the  busiest  life  allows,  I  return 
sometimes  to  what  constituted  the  enjoyment  of  my 
youthful  days.  Surely  I  shall  not  incur  its  censure,  for 
seeking  to  inculcate  and  extend  some  useful  reflections, 
whose  truth  was  then  familiar  to  me ;  or  for  desiring  to 
awaken  in  my  fellow  citizens    a  taste  for  so  noble  an 


THE  RURAL  SOCRATES  363 

employment,  and  offering  them,  in  the  improvement  of 
their  own  estates,  the  means  of  essentially  promoting 
the  welfare  of  their  country.  Finally,  may  I  not  be 
permitted,  with  impunity,  to  relieve  myself  from  the 
anxious  fatigue  inseparable  from  the  practice  of 
physic,  by  a  recreation  that  tends  manifestly  to  public 
emolument  ? 

I  must  nevertheless  acknowledge  that  the  methods 
hitherto  pursued  do  not  appear  to  me  the  best  calcu- 
lated to  answer  the  purposes  of  improvement.  An 
eager  pursuit  after  new  experiments  prevails  among 
those  whose  knowledge  of  the  ancient  husbandry  is 
superficial  and  incompetent.  Some  there  are  who  flatter 
themselves  with  being  considered  as  the  great  improvers 
of  agriculture,  from  the  introduction  of  some  unknown 
species  of  corn,  or  artificial  grass.  There  are  others 
who  expect  fame  from  the  invention  of  some  new  imple- 
ment of  tillage  or  different  method  of  plowing  and  sow- 
ing; while  still  others  hope  to  acquire  it  by  untried 
objects  of  attention,  such  as  the  culture  of  mulberry- 
trees,  for  encouraging  the  breed  of  silk-worms,  and  so 
forth.  In  opposition  to  these  opinions,  I  apprehend 
the  first  principle  we  ought  to  set  out  upon  is  a  perfect 
knowledge  of  the  nature  of  soils,  with  a  competent 
insight  of  such  metliods  of  manuring  as  are  practised 
by  the  most  indefatigable  and  industrious  farmers  for 
the  attainment  of  a  degree  of  fertility.  What  remains 
is  to  procure  a  free  communication  of  these  discoveries 
in  husbandry,  and  an  endeavor,  by  all  possible  means, 
to  incite  a  laudable  and  fervent  emulation  in  the  farmers. 
This  I  should  think  an  eligible  plan  for  restoring  agri- 
culture to  a  flourishing  state.    The  most  circumscribed 


364  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

genius  may  follow  practical  rules,  unmolested  by  any 
obstacle;  while  new  inventions  are  attended  with  a 
crowd  of  difficulties  and  objections.  One  part  of  man- 
kind believe  that,  in  adopting  them,  we  insult  the 
memory  of  our  worthy  progenitors,  who,  according  to 
their  way  of  reasoning,  have  transmitted  to  us  the  com- 
mon methods  of  cultivating  lands ;  and  who,  by  their 
economy,  love  of  labor,  and  many  other  respectable 
qualities,  are  deservedly  objects  of  our  imitation. 
Another  part  agree  that  the  late  discoveries  are  cer- 
tainly very  beneficial  to  particular  countries,  but  re- 
pugnant to  the  nature  of  our  soil.  There  are  yet  a  third 
set  of  objectors  who  allow  all  these  improvements  to 
have  advantages  in  particular  respects;  but  assert 
that  their  superiority  over  the  vulgar  course  of  hus- 
bandry is  so  equivocal,  they  must,  at  least,  be  con- 
sidered as  of  small  utility.  Instead  of  contenting  our- 
selves with  recommending  the  husbandry  of  our  best 
farmers  as  a  model  for  others,  let  them  be  encouraged 
to  pursue  it  by  the  testimony  and  conviction  of  their 
own  eyes.  The  experience  necessary  to  assure  them 
whether  such  or  such  methods  are  best  adapted  to  the 
nature  of  the  soil  and  climate  is  already  attained,  and 
the  advantages  arising  from  them  easily  calculated. 
Besides,  that  it  cannot  be  disputed,  notwithstanding 
what  has  been  alleged  of  the  general  decline  of  agricul- 
ture among  us,  there  are  farmers  in  Switzerland  who 
may  be  accused  of  anything  rather  than  ignorance  in 
husbandry.  A  more  universal  and  generous  diffusion  of 
the  knowledge  of  individuals  seems  all  that  is  wanting 
to  bring  this  art  to  perfection.  The  traveller  who 
crosses  the  greater  part  of  our  cantons  is  amazed  at 


THE  RURAL  SOCRATES  365 

the  diversity  of  natural  riches  presented  to  his  view,  in 
a  country  so  wild  and  romantic.  It  is  scarcely  con- 
ceivable how  the  inliabitants  have  been  able  to  collect, 
within  so  limited  a  spot,  the  various  productions  of 
almost  every  part  of  Europe!  He  traverses  the  fields 
covered  with  waving  corn,  terminated  at  the  right  and 
left  with  vineyards ;  orchards  of  fruit  conceal  the 
villages  from  his  sight ;  while  he  hears  the  distant  sound 
of  lowing  herds  and  bleating  flocks  from  the  mountains 
that  furnish  them  with  food!  I  will  even  venture  to 
affirm  that  many  strangers  may  draw  useful  observa- 
tions from  the  customs  and  practical  regulations  of 
our  most  distinguished  farmers.  Perhaps  the  paucity 
of  writers  in  our  own  country  may  be  the  only  reason 
for  her  not  having  acquired  that  reputation  for  rural 
economy  which  she  enjoys  with  an  uncontrolled  title  in 
all  other  branches  of  the  arts. 

I  have  no  meaning  on  the  other  side  to  depreciate  the 
merit  of  those  noble-minded  fellow  citizens,  who  have 
appropriated  a  considerable  part  of  the  superfluity  of 
their  income  to  the  procuring  of  new-invented  imple- 
ments of  husbandry :  several  sorts  of  grain  and  grass- 
seeds,  trees  and  shrubs  unknown  in  our  climate,  which 
have  the  experience  of  other  countries  in  their  favor, 
as  well  as  the  trials  made  before  they  were  communi- 
cated. These  public-spirited  attentions,  of  whose  good 
effects  we  have  already  reaped  some  advantage,  un- 
doubtedly merit  our  commendation  and  acknowledg- 
ment. The  introduction  of  potatoes,  turkey,  corn,  or 
maize,  and  the  progress  of  preparing  turf  or  peat  for 
fuel,  may  be  comprised  in  the  number:  yet  this  plan  for 
the  improvement  of  agriculture  appears  more  uncertain 


366  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

and  infinitely  slower  in  its  progress  than  that  I  have 
ventured  to  recommend.  More  uncertain,  because  men 
are  too  apt  to  embellish  a  favorite  theory  in  their 
writings.  The  species  of  vegetation  or  method  of 
manuring  they  are  fond  of  is  often  extolled  far  beyond 
reality,  and  they  give  the  reins  to  fancy  in  lavish 
descriptions  of  ideal  excellence.  It  must  be  a  long 
course  of  experiments  that  alone  can  determine  whether 
this  or  that  corn  or  grass  may  be  naturalized  with  real 
benefit  to  a  country,  or  the  adoption  of  a  new  system  of 
husbandry,  with  its  attendant  expense,  be  an  ad- 
vantageous compensation  for  abandoning  the  old  one. 
Experiments  commonly  succeed  to  admiration  in  a  well- 
cultivated  garden  or  nurserj'  ground ;  but  when  ex- 
tended to  large  inclosures,  the  luxuriance  of  the  pro- 
duce is  often  greatly  checked  and  diminished,  and  its 
utility  absorbed  in  the  expense  of  labor.  I  have  also 
observed  that  new  inventions  are  very  slow  in  their 
effects,  and  can  be  of  no  real  benefit  till  they  become 
habitually  established  customs.  It  is  a  work  of  time 
to  convince  a  peasant  that  the  alterations  you  propose 
are  eligible ;  to  persuade  him  to  a  renunciation  of  rooted 
prejudices,  and  to  desert  the  course  of  husbandry  in- 
stilled into  him  by  his  forefathers,  in  favor  of  novelty 
and  inexperience. 


XXIX 

EXTRACTS  FROM  A  DIARY 

George  Washington 

April  1th,  1785. — ^Cut  two  or  three  rows  of  the  wheat 
(Cape  wheat)  within  six  inches  of  the  ground,  it  being 
near  eighteen  inches  high,  that  which  was  first  sown,  and 
the  blades  of  the  whole  singed  with  the  frost. 

8f/i. — Sowed  oats  to-da}^  in  drills  at  Muddy  Hole 
with  my  barrel  plough.  Ground  much  too  wet ;  some  of 
it  had  been  manured,  but  had  been  twice  ploughed,  then 
listed,  then  twice  harrowed  before  sowing;  which,  had 
it  not  been  for  the  frequent  rains,  would  have  put  the 
ground  in  fine  tilth.  Ploughed  up  the  turnip  patch  at 
home  for  orchard  grass. 

lOtJi. — Began  bricklaying  to-day.  Completed  sow- 
ing, with  twenty-four  quarts  of  oats,  thirty-eight  rows 
at  Muddy  Hole  ten  feet  apart,  in  the  ground  intended 
for  corn. 

11  ^7i. — Sowed  twenty-six  rows  of  barley  in  the  same 
field  at  Muddy  Hole  in  the  same  manner,  with  the  drill 
plough,  and  with  precisely  the  same  workings  the  oats 
had  adjoining  thereto.  This  was  done  with  twelve 
quarts  of  seed.  After  three  ploughings  and  three  har- 
rowings,  sowed  millet  in  eleven  rows  three  feet  apart, 
opposite  to  the   overseer's   house   in   the   Neck.    Per- 

367 


368  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

ceiveJ  the  last  sowed  oats  at  Dogue  Run,  and  those  sown 
in  the  Neck,  were  coming  up. 

12th. — Sowed  sixteen  acres  of  Siberian  wheat,  with 
eighteen  quarts,  in  rows  between  corn,  eight  feet  apart. 
This  ground  had  been  prepared  in  the  following  manner. 
(1)  A  single  furrow;  (2)  another  in  the  same  to  deepen 
it;  (3)  four  furrows  to  throw  the  earth  back  into  the 
two  first,  which  made  ridges  of  five  furrows.  These,  being 
done  some  time  ago,  and  the  sowing  retarded  by  fre- 
quent rains,  had  got  hard;  therefore,  (4)  before  the 
seed  was  sown,  these  ridges  were  split  again  by  running 
twice  in  the  middle  of  them,  both  times  in  the  same  fur- 
row; (5)  after  which  the  ridges  were  harrowed;  and, 
(6)  where  the  ground  was  lumpy,  run  a  spiked  roller 
with  a  harrow  at  the  tail  of  it,  which  was  found  very  ef- 
ficacious in  breaking  the  clods  and  pulverizing  the  earth, 
and  would  have  done  it  perfectly,  if  there  had  not  been 
too  much  moisture  remaining  from  the  late  rains.  After 
this,  harrowing  and  rolling  where  necessary,  the  wheat 
was  sown  with  the  drill  plough  on  the  reduced  ridges 
eight  feet  apart,  as  above  mentioned,  and  harrowed  in 
with  the  small  harrow  belonging  to  the  plough.  But  it 
should  have  been  observed,  that,  after  the  ridges  were 
split  by  the  middle  double  furrows,  and  before  they  were 
closed  again  by  the  harrow,  a  little  manure  was 
sprinkled  in  them. 

At  Dogue  Run,  listing  the  ground  intended  for 
Siberian  wheat,  barley,  &c.,  a  second  time. 

At  Muddy  Hole  sowed  with  the  drill  plough  two  rows 
of  the  Albany  pease  between  the  corn  rows,  to  see 
whether  they  would  come  to  anything  for  want  of  the 
support  which  they  give  one  another  when  sown  broad- 


EXTRACTS  FROM  A  DIARY  369 

cast.  The  same  management  given  the  ground  as  for 
oats  and  barley  at  this  place. 

IStli. — Sowed  oats  in  drills  ten  feet  apart,  between 
corn  rows  in  the  Neck,  twenty-four  rows,  in  the  follow- 
ing manner.  (1)  A  single  furrow;  (2)  another  and  deep 
furrow  in  this;  (3)  four  bouts  to  these;  (4)  ploughed 
agarin  in  the  same  manner;  (5)  a  single  furrow  in  the 
middle  of  these;  (6)  manure  sprinkled  in  this  furrow; 
(7)  the  great  harrow  with  the  drill  or  barrel  plough,  and 
harrowed  in  with  the  harrow  at  the  tail  of  it.  Note. — It 
should  have  been  observed,  that  the  field  intended  for 
experiments  at  this  plantation  is  divided  into  three 
parts,  by  bouting  rows  running  crosswise;  and  that 
manure,  and  the  last  single  furrow,  are  (at  least  for  the 
present)  bestowed  on  the  most  westerly  of  those  nearest 
the  Barn. 

14^7i. — Harrowed  the  ground  at  Muddy  Hole,  which 
had  been  twice  ploughed,  for  Albany  pease  in  broad- 
cast. At  Dogue  Run  began  to  sow  the  remainder  of  the 
Siberian  wheat,  about  fourteen  quarts,  which  had  been 
left  at  the  Ferry ;  run  deep  furrows  in  the  middle,  and 
made  five-feet  ridges.  Did  the  same  for  carrots  in  the 
same  field  on  the  west  side  next  the  meadow.  Ordered 
a  piece  of  ground,  two  acres,  to  be  ploughed  at  the 
Ferry  around  the  old  corn-house,  to  be  drilled  with  corn 
and  potatoes  between,  each  ten  feet  apart,  row  from  row 
of  the  same  kind.  Sowed  in  the  Neck,  or  rather  planted, 
next  to  the  eleven  rows  of  millet,  thirty-five  rows  of  the 
rib-grass  seeds,  three  feet  apart,  and  one  foot  asunder 
in  the  rows. 

15fh. — Sowed  six  bushels  of  the  Albany  pease  broad- 
cast at  Muddy  Hole,  on  about  an  acre  and  a  half  of 


370  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

ground,  which  was  harrowed  yesterday  as  mentioned 
above. 

Sowed  in  the  Neck  along  side  of  the  rib-grass  fifty 
rows  of  burnet  seed,  exactly  as  the  last  was  put  in; 
that  is,  in  three  feet  rows,  and  one  foot  in  the  row. 


XXX 

A  LETTER  TO  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

George  Washington 

Mount  Vernon,  4>  October,  1795. 

Dear  Sir, 

I  am  much  pleased  with  the  account  you  have  given 
of  the  succory.  This,  like  all  other  things  of  the  sort 
with  me,  since  my  absence  from  home,  has  come  to 
nothing;  for  neither  my  overseers  nor  manager  will 
attend  properly  to  anything  but  the  crops  they  have 
usually  cultivated ;  and,  in  spite  of  all  I  can  say,  if  there 
is  the  smallest  discretionary  power  allowed  them,  they 
will  fill  the  land  with  Indian  corn,  although  even  to 
themselves  there  are  the  most  obvious  traces  of  its  bane- 
ful effects.  I  am  resolved,  however,  as  soon  as  it  shall 
be  in  my  power  to  attend  a  little  more  closely  to  my  own 
concerns,  to  make  this  crop  yield  in  a  degree  to  other 
grain,  to  pulses,  and  to  grasses.  I  am  beginning  again 
with  chiccory,  from  a  handful  of  seed  given  me  by  Mr. 
Strickland,  which,  though  flourishing  at  present,  has  no 
appearance  of  seeding  this  year.  Lucerne  has  not  suc- 
ceeded better  with  me  than  with  you ;  but  I  will  give  It 
another  and  a  fairer  trial  before  it  is  abandoned  alto- 
gether. Clover,  when  I  can  dress  lots  well,  succeeds 
with  me  to  my  full  expectation,  but  not  on  the  fields  in 
rotation,  although  I  have  been  at  much  cost  in  seeding 

371 


372  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

them.     This  has   greatly  disconcerted  the   system  of 
rotation  on  which  I  had  decided. 

I  wish  you  may  succeed  in  getting  good  seed  of  the 
winter  vetch.  I  have  often  imported  it,  but  the  seed 
never  vegetated,  or  in  so  small  a  proportion,  as  to  be 
destroyed  by  weeds.  I  believe  it  would  be  an  acquisition, 
if  it  was  once  introduced  properly  in  our  farms.  The 
Albany  pea,  which  is  the  same  as  the  field  pea  of 
Europe,  I  have  tried,  and  found  it  will  grow  well;  but 
is  subject  to  the  same  bug  which  perforates  the  garden 
pea,  and  eats  out  the  kernel.  So  it  will  happen,  I  fear, 
with  the  pea  you  propose  to  import.  I  had  great  ex- 
pectation from  a  green  dressing  with  buckwheat,  as  a 
preparatory  fallow  for  a  crop  of  wheat,  but  it  has  not 
answered  my  expectation  yet.  I  ascribe  this,  however, 
more  to  mismanagement  in  the  times  of  seeding  and 
ploughing  in,  than  any  defect  of  the  system.  The  first 
ought  to  be  so  ordered,  in  point  of  time,  as  to  meet  a 
convenient  season  for  ploughing  it  in,  while  the  plant  is 
in  its  most  succulent  state.  But  this  has  never  been 
done  on  my  farms,  and  consequently  has  drawn  as  much 
from,  as  it  has  given  to  the  earth.  It  has  always  ap- 
peared to  me  that  there  were  two  modes  in  which  buck- 
wheat might  be  used  advantageously  as  a  manure.  One, 
to  sow  early,  and,  as  soon  as  a  sufficiency  of  seed  is 
ripened,  to  stock  the  ground  a  second  time,  to  turn  the 
whole  in,  and  when  the  succeeding  growth  is  getting  in 
full  bloom,  to  turn  that  in  also,  before  the  seed  begins  to 
ripen;  and,  when  the  fermentation  and  putrefaction 
ceases,  to  sow  the  ground  in  that  state,  and  plough  in 
the  wheat.  The  other  mode  is,  to  sow  the  buckwheat  so 
late,  as  that  it  shall  be  generally  about  a  foot  high  at 


A  LETTER  TO  THOMAS  JEFFERSON    373 

the  usual  seeding  of  wheat ;  then  turn  it  in,  and  sow 
thereon  immediately,  as  on  a  clover  lay,  harrowing  in 
the  seed  lightly  to  avoid  disturbing  the  buried  buck- 
wheat. I  have  never  tried  the  latter  method,  but  see  no 
reason  against  its  succeeding.  The  other,  as  I  observed 
above,  I  have  prosecuted,  but  the  buckwheat  has  always 
stood  too  long,  and  consequently  had  got  too  dry  and 
sticky  to  answer  the  end  of  a  succulent  plant. 

But  of  all  the  improving  and  ameliorating  crops, 
none  in  my  opinion  is  equal  to  potatoes,  on  stiff  and 
hard  bound  land,  as  mine  is.  I  am  satisfied,  from  a 
variety  of  instances,  that  on  such  land  a  crop  of  po- 
tatoes is  equal  to  an  ordinary  dressing.  In  no  instance 
have  I  failed  of  good  wheat,  oats,  or  clover,  that  fol- 
lowed potatoes ;  and  I  conceive  they  give  the  soil  a 
darker  hue.  I  shall  thank  you  for  the  result  of  your 
proposed  experiment  relative  to  the  winter  vetch  and 
pea  when  "they  are  made. 

I  am  sorry  to  hear  of  the  depredations  committed 
by  the  weevil  in  your  parts  ;  it  is  a  great  calamity  at  all 
times,  and  this  year,  when  the  demand  for  wheat  is  so 
great,  and  the  price  so  high,  must  be  a  mortifying  one 
to  the  farmers.  The  rains  have  been  very  general,  and 
more  abundant  since  the  1st  of  August,  than  ever  hap- 
pened in  a  summer  within  the  memory  of  man.  Scarcely 
a  mill-dam,  or  bridge,  between  this  and  Philadelphia, 
was  able  to  resist  them,  and  some  were  carried  off  a 
second  and  third  time. 

Mrs.  Washington  is  thankful  for  your  kind  remem- 
brance of  her,  and  unites  with  me  in  best  wishes  for  you. 
With  very  great  esteem  and  regard,  I  am,  dear  Sir,  &c 


XXXI 

LINCOLN  ON  AGRICULTURE  * 

Abraham  Lincoln 

Members  of  the  Agricultural  Society  and  Citizens  of 
Wisconsin:  Agricultural  fairs  are  becoming  an  insti- 
tution of  the  country.  They  are  useful  in  more  ways 
than  one.  They  bring  us  together,  and  thereby  make  us 
better  acquainted  and  better  friends  than  we  otherwise 
would  be.  From  the  first  appearance  of  man  upon  the 
earth  down  to  very  recent  times  the  words  "stranger" 
and  "enemy"  were  quite  or  almost  synonymous.  Long 
after  civilized  nations  had  defined  robbery  and  murder 
as  high  crimes,  and  had  affixed  severe  punishments  to 
them,  when  practised  among  and  upon  their  own  people 
respectively,  it  was  deemed  no  offense,  but  even  meri- 
torious, to  rob  and  murder  and  enslave  strangers, 
whether  as  nations  or  as  individuals.  Even  yet,  this  has 
not  totally  disappeared.  The  man  of  the  highest  moral 
cultivation,  in  spite  of  all  which  abstract  principle  can 
do,  likes  him  whom  he  does  know  much  better  than  him 
whom  he  does  not  know.  To  correct  evils,  great  and 
small,  which  spring  from  want  of  sympathy,  and  from 
positive  enmity  among  strangers,  as  nations  or  as  in- 
dividuals, is  one  of  the  highest  functions  of  civilization. 

*  Annual  address  before  the  Wisconsin  State  Agricultural  Society,  at 
Milwaukee,  "Wisconsin,  September  30,  1859.  As  far  as  can  be  ascertained 
this  is  the  only  address  Abraham  Lincoln  gave  upon  any  agricultural  sub- 
ject. From  Lincoln's  "Complete  Works,"  by  permission  of  the  publishers. 
The  Century  Company. 

374 


LINCOLN  ON  AGRICULTURE  375 

To  this  end  our  agricultural  fairs  contribute  in  no  small 
degree.  They  render  more  pleasant,  and  more  strong 
and  more  durable,  the  bond  of  social  and  political  union 
among  us.  Again,  if,  as  Pope  declares,  "happiness  is 
our  being's  end  and  aim,"  our  fairs  contribute  much  to 
that  end  and  aim,  as  occasions  of  recreation,  as  holi- 
days. Constituted  as  man  is,  he  has  positive  need  of 
occasional  recreation,  and  whatever  can  give  him  this 
associated  with  virtue  and  advantage,  and  free  from 
vice  and  disadvantage,  is  a  positive  good.  Such 
recreation  our  fairs  afford.  They  are  a  present  pleas- 
ure, to  be  followed  by  no  pain  as  a  consequence;  they 
are  a  present  pleasure,  making  the  future  more  pleasant. 

But  the  chief  use  of  agricultural  fairs  is  to  aid  in 
improving  the  great  calling  of  agriculture  in  all  its  de- 
partments and  minute  divisions ;  to  make  mutual  ex- 
change of  agricultural  discovery,  information,  and 
knowledge ;  so  that,  at  the  end,  all  may  know  everything 
which  may  have  been  known  to  but  one  or  to  but  few,  at 
the  beginning ;  to  bring  together  especially  all  which  is 
supposed  to  be  not  generally  known  because  of  recent 
discovery  or  invention. 

And  not  only  to  bring  together  and  to  impart  all 
which  has  been  accidentally  discovered  and  invented 
upon  ordinary  motive,  but  by  exciting  emulation  for 
premiums,  and  for  the  pride  and  honor  of  success, — 
of  triumph,  in  some  sort, — to  stimulate  that  discovery 
and  invention  into  extraordinary  activity.  In  this  these 
fairs  are  kindred  to  the  patent  clause  in  the  Constitu- 
tion of  the  United  States,  and  to  the  department  and 
practical  system  based  upon  that  clause. 

One  feature,  I  believe,  of  every  fair  is  a  regular  ad- 


376  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

dress.  The  Agricultural  Society  of  the  young,  pros- 
perous, and  soon  to  be  great  State  of  Wisconsin  has 
done  me  the  high  honor  of  selecting  me  to  make  that 
address  upon  this  occasion — an  honor  for  which  I  make 
my  profound  and  grateful  acknowledgment. 

I  presume  I  am  not  expected  to  employ  the  time 
assigned  me  in  the  mere  flattery  of  the  farmers  as  a 
class.  My  opinion  of  them  is  that,  in  proportion  to 
numbers,  they  are  neither  better  nor  worse  than  other 
people.  In  the  nature  of  things  they  are  more  numerous 
than  any  other  class  ;  and  I  believe  there  really  are  more 
attempts  at  flattering  them  than  any  other,  the  reason 
for  which  I  cannot  perceive,  unless  it  be  that  they  can 
cast  more  votes  than  any  other.  On  reflection,  I  am  not 
quite  sure  that  there  is  not  cause  of  suspicion  against 
you  in  selecting  me,  in  some  sort  a  politician  and  in  no 
sort  a  farmer,  to  address  you. 

But  farmers  being  the  most  numerous  class,  it  fol- 
lows that  their  interest  is  the  largest  interest.  It  also 
follows  that  that  interest  is  most  worthy  to  be  cherished 
and  cultivated — that  if  there  be  inevitable  conflict  be- 
tween that  interest  and  any  other,  that  other  should 
yield. 

Again,  I  suppose  it  is  not  expected  of  me  to  impart 
to  you  much  specific  information  on  agriculture.  You 
have  no  reason  to  believe,  and  do  not  believe,  that  I 
possess  it;  if  that  were  what  you  seek  in  this  address, 
any  one  of  your  own  number  or  class  would  be  more  able 
to  furnish  it.  You,  perhaps,  do  expect  me  to  give  some 
general  interest  to  the  occasion,  and  to  make  some  gen- 
eral suggestions  on  practical  matters.  I  shall  attempt 
nothing  more.     And  in  such  suggestions  by  me,  quite 


LINCOLN  ON  AGRICULTURE  377 

likely  very  little  will  be  new  to  you,  and  a  large  part 
of  the  rest  will  be  possibly  already  known  to  be 
erroneous. 

My  first  suggestion  is  an  inquiry  as  to  the  effect  of 
greater  thoroughness  in  all  the  departments  of  agricul- 
ture than  now  prevails  in  the  Northwest — perhaps  I 
might  say  in  America.  To  speak  entirely  within 
bounds,  it  is  known  that  fifty  bushels  of  wheat,  or  one 
hundred  bushels  of  Indian  corn,  can  be  produced  from 
an  acre.  Less  than  a  year  ago  I  saw  it  stated  that  a 
man,  by  extraordinary  care  and  labor,  had  produced  of 
wheat  what  was  equal  to  two  hundred  bushels  from 
an  acre.  But  take  fifty  of  wheat,  and  one  hundred  of 
corn,  to  be  the  possibility,  and  compare  it  with  the 
actual  crops  of  the  country.  Many  years  ago  I  saw  it 
stated,  in  a  patent-office  report,  that  eighteen  bushels 
was  the  average  crop  throughout  the  United  States; 
and  this  year  an  intelligent  farmer  of  Illinois  assures  me 
that  he  did  not  believe  that  the  land  harvested  in  that 
State  this  season  had  yielded  more  than  an  average  of 
eight  bushels  to  the  acre ;  much  was  cut,  and  then  aban- 
doned as  not  worth  threshing,  and  much  was  abandoned 
as  not  worth  cutting.  As  to  Indian  corn,  and  indeed, 
most  other  crops,  the  case  has  not  been  much  better.  For 
the  last  four  years  I  do  not  believe  the  ground  planted 
with  corn  in  Illinois  has  produced  an  average  of  twenty 
bushels  to  the  acre.  It  is  true  that  heretofore  we  have 
had  better  crops  with  no  better  cultivation,  but  I  be- 
lieve it  is  also  true  that  the  soil  has  never  been  pushed 
up  to  one  half  of  its  capacity. 

What  would  be  the  effect  upon  the  farming  interest 
to  push  the  soil  up  to  something  near  its  full  capacity.? 


378  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

UnquesHonably  it  will  take  more  labor  to  produce  fifty 
bushels  from  an  acre  than  it  will  to  produce  ten  bushels 
from  the  same  acre ;  but  will  it  take  more  labor  to  pro- 
duce fifty  bushels  from  one  acre  than  from  five?  Un- 
questionably thorough  cultivation  will  require  more 
labor  to  the  acre;  but  will  it  require  more  to  the  bushel? 
If  it  should  require  just  as  much  to  the  bushel,  there 
are  some  probable,  and  several  certain,  advantages  in 
favor  of  the  thorough  cultivation.  It  is  probable  it 
would  develop  those  unknown  causes  which  of  late  years 
have  cut  down  our  crops  below  their  former  average. 
It  is  almost  certain,  I  think,  that  by  deeper  plowing, 
analysis  of  the  soils,  experiments  with  manures  and 
varieties  of  seeds,  observance  of  seasons,  and  the  like, 
these  causes  would  be  discovered  and  remedied.  It  Is  cer- 
tain that  thorough  cultivation  would  spare  half,  or 
more  than  half,  the  cost  of  land,  simply  because  the 
same  product  would  be  got  from  half,  or  from  less  than 
half,  the  quantity  of  land.  This  proposition  is  self- 
evident,  and  can  be  made  no  plainer  by  repetitions  or 
illustrations.  The  cost  of  land  is  a  great  item,  even  in 
new  countries,  and  it  constantly  grows  greater  and 
greater,  in  comparison  with  other  items  as  the  country 
grows  older. 

It  also  would  spare  the  making  and  maintaining  of 
inclosures  for  the  same,  whether  these  Inclosures  should 
be  hedges,  ditches,  or  fences.  This  again  is  a  heavy 
item — ^heavy  at  first,  and  heavy  in  its  continual  demand 
for  repairs.  I  remember  once  being  greatly  astonished 
by  an  apparently  authentic  exhibition  of  the  proportion 
the  cost  of  an  inclosure  bears  to  all  the  other  expenses 
of  the  farmer,  though  I  cannot  remember  exactly  what 


LINCOLN  ON  AGRICULTURE  370 

that  proportion  was.  Any  farmer,  if  he  will,  can  ascer- 
tain it  in  his  own  case  for  himself. 

Again  a  great  amount  of  locomotion  is  spared  by 
thorough  cultivation.  Take  fifty  bushels  of  wheat  ready 
for  harvest,  standing  upon  a  single  acre,  and  it  can  be 
harvested  in  any  of  the  known  ways  with  less  than  half 
the  labor  which  would  be  required  if  it  were  spread  over 
five  acres.  This  M'ould  be  true  if  cut  by  the  old  hand- 
sickle  ;  true,  to  a  greater  extent,  if  by  the  scythe  and 
cradle ;  and  to  a  still  greater  extent,  if  by  the  machines 
now  in  use.  These  machines  are  chiefly  valuable  as  a 
means  of  substituting  animal-power  for  the  power  of 
man  in  this  branch  of  farm-work.  In  the  highest  de- 
gree of  perfection  yet  reached  in  applying  the  horse- 
power to  harvesting,  fully  nine  tenths  of  the  power  is 
expended  by  the  animal  in  carrying  himself  and  drag- 
ging the  machine  over  the  field,  leaving  certainly  not 
more  than  one  tenth  to  be  applied  directly  to  the  only 
end  of  the  whole  operation — the  gathering  in  of  the 
grain,  and  clipping  of  the  straw.  When  grain  is  ver}' 
thin  on  the  ground,  it  is  alwa3's  more  or  less  inter- 
mingled with  weeds,  chess,  and  the  like,  and  a  large  part 
of  the  power  is  expended  in  cutting  these.  It  is  plain 
that  when  the  crop  is  very  thick  upon  the  ground,  a 
larger  proportion  of  the  power  is  directly  applied  in 
gathering  in  and  cutting  it ;  and  the  smaller  to  that 
Avhich  is  totally  useless  as  an  end.  And  what  I  have 
said  of  harvesting  is  true  in  a  greater  or  less  degree  of 
mowing,  plowing,  gathering  in  of  crops  generally,  and 
indeed  of  almost  all  farm-work. 

The  effect  of  thorough  cultivation  upon  the  farmer's 
own  mind,  and  in  reaction  through  his  mind  back  upon 


380  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

his  business,  is  perhaps  quite  equal  to  any  other  of  its- 
effects.  Every  man  is  proud  of  what  he  does  well,  and 
no  man  is  proud  of  that  he  does  not  well.  With  the 
former  his  heart  is  in  his  work,  and  he  will  do  twice  as 
much  of  it  with  less  fatigue;  the  latter  he  performs  a 
little  imperfectly,  looks  at  it  in  disgust,  turns  from  it, 
and  imagines  himself  exceedingly  tired — the  little  he  has 
done  comes  to  nothing  for  want  of  finishing. 

The  man  who  produces  a  good  full  crop  will  scarcely 
ever  let  a  part  of  it  go  to  waste ;  he  will  keep  up  the  in- 
closure  about  it,  and  allow  neither  man  nor  beast  to 
trespass  upon  it ;  he  will  gather  it  in  due  season,  and 
store  it  in  perfect  security.  Thus  he  labors  with  satis- 
faction, and  saves  himself  the  whole  fruit  of  his  labor. 
The  other,  starting  with  no  purpose  for  a  full  crop, 
labors  less,  and  with  less  satisfaction,  allows  his  fences 
to  fall,  and  cattle  to  trespass,  gathers  not  in  due  season, 
or  not  at  all.  Thus  the  labor  he  has  performed  is 
wasted  away,  little  by  little,  till  in  the  end  he  derives 
scarcely  anything  from  it. 

The  ambition  for  broad  acres  leads  to  poor  farming, 
even  with  men  of  energy.  I  scarcely  ever  knew  a  mam- 
moth farm  to  sustain  itself,  much  less  to  return  a  profit 
upon  the  outlay.  I  have  more  than  once  known  a  man 
to  spend  a  respectable  fortune  upon  one,  fail,  and  leave 
it,  and  then  some  man  of  modest  aim  get  a  small  frac- 
tion of  the  ground,  and  make  a  good  living  upon  it. 
Mammoth  farms  are  like  tools  or  weapons  which  are  too 
heavy  to  be  handled ;  ere  long  they  are  thrown  aside  at 
a  great  loss. 

The  successful  application  of  steam-power  to  farm- 
work  is  a  desideratum — especially  a  steam  plow.     It  is 


LINCOLN  ON  AGRICULTURE  381 

not  enougli  that  a  machine  operated  by  steam  will 
really  plow.  To  be  successful  it  must,  all  things  con- 
sidered, plow  better  than  can  be  done  with  animal- 
power.  It  must  do  all  the  work  as  well,  and  cheaper ; 
or  more  rapidly,  so  as  to  get  through  more  perfectly  in 
season ;  or  in  some  way  afford  an  advantage  over  plow- 
ing with  animals,  else  it  is  no  success.  I  have  never  seen  a 
machine  intended  for  a  steam  plow.  Much  praise  and 
admiration  are  bestowed  upon  some  of  them,  and  they 
may  be,  for  aught  I  know,  already  successful;  but  I 
have  not  perceived  the  demonstration  of  it.  I  have 
thought  a  good  deal,  in  an  abstract  way,  about  a  steam 
plow.  That  one  which  shaU  be  so  contrived  as  to  apply 
the  larger  proportion  of  its  power  to  the  cutting  and 
turning  of  the  soil,  and  the  smallest,  to  the  moving  itself 
over  the  field,  will  be  the  best  one.  A  very  small  sta- 
tionary engine  would  draw  a  large  gang  of  plows 
through  the  ground  from  a  short  distance  to  itself ;  but 
when  it  is  not  stationary',  but  has  to  move  along  like  a 
horse,  dragging  the  plows  after  it,  it  must  have  ad- 
ditional power  to  carry  itself;  and  the  difficulty  grows 
with  what  is  intended  to  overcome  it ;  for  what  adds 
power  also  adds  size  and  weight  to  the  machine,  thus 
increasing  again  the  demand  for  power. 

Suppose  you  construct  the  machine  so  as  to  cut  a 
succession  of  short  furrows,  say  a  rod  in  length,  trans- 
versely to  the  course  the  machine  is  locomoting,  some- 
thing like  the  shuttle  in  weaving.  In  such  case  the  wholo 
machine  would  move  north  only  the  width  of  the  furrow, 
while  in  length  the  furrow  would  be  a  rod  from  east  to 
west.  In  such  case  a  very  large  proportion  of  the  power 
would  be  applied  to  the  actual  plowing.     But  in  this. 


382  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

too,  there  would  be  difficulty,  which  would  be  the  getting 
of  the  plow  into  and  out  of  the  ground,  at  the  end  of 
all  these  short  furrows. 

I  believe,  however,  ingenious  men  will,  if  they  have 
not  already,  overcome  the  difficulty  I  have  suggested. 
But  there  is  still  another,  about  which  I  am  less  san- 
guine. It  is  the  supply  of  fuel,  and  especially  water,  to 
make  steam.  Such  supply  is  clearly  practicable;  but 
can  the  expense  of  it  be  borne.''  Steamboats  live  upon 
the  water,  and  find  their  fuel  at  stated  places.  Steam- 
mills  and  other  stationary  steam-machinery  have  their 
stationary  supplies  of  fuel  and  water.  Railroad  loco- 
motives have  their  regular  wood  and  water  stations. 
But  the  steam  plow  is  less  fortunate.  It  does  not  live 
upon  the  water,  and  if  it  be  once  at  a  water-station, 
it  will  work  away  from  it,  and  when  it  gets  away  can- 
not return  without  leaving  its  work,  at  a  great  expense 
of  its  time  and  strength.  It  will  occur  that  a  wagon- 
and-horse  team  might  be  employed  to  supply  it  with  fuel 
and  water ;  but  this,  too,  is  expensive ;  and  the  question 
recurs,  "Can  the  expense  be  borne?"  When  this  is 
added  to  all  other  expenses,  will  not  plowing  cost  more 
than  in  the  old  way.'' 

It  is  to  be  hoped  that  the  steam-plow  will  be  finally 
successful,  and  if  it  shall  be,  "thorough  cultivation" — 
putting  the  soil  to  the  top  of  its  capacity,  producing 
the  largest  crop  possible  from  a  given  quantity  of 
ground — will  be  most  favorable  for  it.  Doing  a  large 
amount  of  work  upon  a  small  quantity,  it  will  be  as 
nearly  as  possible  stationary  while  working,  and  as 
free  as  possible  from  locomotion,  thus  expending  its 
strength  as  much  as  possible  in  traveling.    Our  thanks. 


LINCOLN  ON  AGRICULTURE  383 

and  something  more  substantial  than  thanks,  are  due  to 
every  man  engaged  in  the  effort  to  produce  a  successful 
steam-plow.  Even  the  unsuccessful  will  bring  some- 
thing to  light  which,  in  the  hands  of  others,  will  con- 
tribute to  the  final  success.  I  have  not  pointed  out  dif- 
ficulties in  order  to  discourage,  but  in  order  that,  being 
seen,  they  may  be  the  more  readily  overcome. 

The  world  is  agreed  that  labor  is  the  source  from 
which  human  wants  are  mainly  supplied.  There  is  no 
dispute  upon  this  point.  From  this  point,  however,  men 
immediately  diverge.  Much  disputation  is  maintained 
as  to  the  best  way  of  applying  and  controlling  the  labor 
element.  By  some  it  is  assumed  that  labor  is  available 
only  in  connection  with  capital — that  nobody  labors, 
unless  somebody  else  owning  capital,  somehow,  by  the 
use  of  it,  induces  him  to  do  it.  Having  assumed  this, 
they  proceed  to  consider  whether  it  is  best  that  capital 
shall  hire  laborers,  and  thus  induce  them  to  work  by 
their  own  consent,  or  buy  them,  and  drive  them  to  it, 
without  their  consent.  Having  proceeded  so  far,  they 
naturally  conclude  that  all  laborers  are  naturally  either 
hired  laborers  or  slaves.  They  further  assume  that 
whoever  is  once  a  hired  laborer,  is  fatally  fixed  in  that 
condition  for  life ;  and  thence  again,  that  his  condition 
is  as  bad  as,  or  worse  than,  that  of  a  slave.  This  is  the 
"mud-sill"  theory.  But  another  class  of  reasoners  hold 
the  opinion  that  there  is  no  such  relation  between  capital 
and  labor  as  assumed ;  that  there  is  no  such  thing  as  a 
free  man  being  fatally  fixed  for  life  in  the  condition  of  a 
hired  laborer;  that  both  these  assumptions  are  false, 
and  all  inferences  from  them  groundless.  They  hold 
that  labor  is  prior  to,  and  independent  of,  capital ;  that. 


384  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

in  fact,  capital  is  the  fruit  of  labor,  and  could  never 
have  existed  if  labor  had  not  first  existed;  that  labor 
can  exist  without  capital,  but  that  capital  could  never 
have  existed  without  labor.  Hence  they  hold  that  labor 
is  the  superior — greatly  the  superior — of  capital. 

They  do  not  deny  that  there  is,  and  probably  alwa3^s 
will  be,  a  relation  between  capital  and  labor.  The  error, 
as  they  hold,  is  in  assuming  that  the  whole  labor  of  the 
world  exists  within  that  relation.  A  few  men  own  capi- 
tal ;  and  that  few  avoid  labor  themselves,  and  with  their 
capital  hire  or  buy  another  few  to  labor  for  them.  A 
large  majority  belongs  to  neither  class — neither  work 
for  others,  nor  have  others  working  for  them.  Even  in 
all  our  slave  states,  except  South  Carolina,  a  majority 
of  the  whole  people  of  all  colors  are  neither  slaves  nor 
masters.  In  these  free  states,  a  large  majority  are 
neither  hirers  nor  hired.  Men,  with  their  families — 
wives,  sons,  and  daughters — work  for  themselves,  on 
their  farms,  in  their  houses,  and  in  their  shops,  taking 
the  whole  product  to  themselves,  and  asking  no  favors 
from  capital  on  the  one  hand,  nor  of  hirelings  or  slaves 
on  the  other.  It  is  not  forgotten  that  a  considerable 
number  of  persons  mingle  their  own  labor  with  capital 
— that  is,  labor  with  their  own  hands  and  also  buy 
slaves  or  hire  free  men  to  labor  for  them ;  but  this  is 
only  a  mixed,  and  not  a  distinct,  class.  No  principal 
state  is  disturbed  by  the  existence  of  this  mixed  class. 
Again,  as  has  already  been  said,  the  opponents  of  the 
"mud-sill"  theory  insist  that  there  is  not,  of  necessity, 
any  such  thing  as  the  free  hired  laborer  being  fixed  to 
that  condition  for  life.  There  is  demonstration  for 
saying  this.     Many  independent  men  in  this  assembly 


LINCOLN  ON  AGRICULTURE  385 

doubtless  a  few  years  ago  were  hired  laborers.     And 
their  case  is  almost,  if  not  quite,  the  general  rule. 

The  prudent,  penniless  beginner  in  the  world  labors 
for  wages  awhile,  saves  a  surplus  with  which  to  buy 
tools  or  land  for  himself,  then  labors  on  his  own  ac- 
count another  while,  and  at  length  hires  another  new  be- 
ginner to  help  him.  This,  say  its  advocates,  is  free  labor 
— the  just,  and  generous,  and  prosperous  system,  which 
opens  the  way  for  all,  gives  hope  to  all,  and  energy,  and 
progress,  and  improvement  of  condition  to  all.  If  any 
continue  through  life  in  the  condition  of  the  hired 
laborer,  it  is  not  the  fault  of  the  system,  but  because  of 
either  a  dependent  nature  which  prefers  it,  or  improvi- 
dence, folly,  or  singular  misfortune.  I  have  said  this 
much  about  the  elements  of  labor  generally,  as  intro- 
ductory to  a  consideration  of  a  new  phase  which  that 
element  is  in  process  of  assuming.  The  old  general  rule 
was  that  educated  people  did  not  perform  manual  labor. 
They  managed  to  eat  their  bread,  leaving  the  toil  of  pro- 
ducing it  to  the  uneducated.  This  was  not  an  insup- 
portable evil  to  the  working  bees,  so  long  as  the  class  of 
drones  remained  very  small.  But  now,  especially  in 
these  free  states,  nearly  all  are  educated — quite  too 
nearly  all  to  leave  the  labor  of  the  uneducated  in  any 
wise  adequate  to  the  support  of  the  whole.  It  follows 
from  this  that  henceforth  educated  people  must  labor. 
Otherwise,  education  itself  would  become  a  positive  and 
intolerable  evil.  No  country  can  sustain  In  idleness 
more  than  a  small  percentage  of  its  numbers.  The  great 
majority  must  labor  at  something  productive.  From 
these  premises  the  problem  springs,  "How  can  labor  and 
education  be  the  most  satisfactorily  combined?" 


886  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

By  the  "mud-sill"  theory  it  is  assumed  that  labor  and 
education  are  incompatible,  and  any  practicable  com- 
bination of  them  impossible.  According  to  that  theory, 
a  blind  horse  upon  a  tread-mill  is  a  perfect  illustration 
of  what  a  laborer  should  be — all  the  better  for  being 
blind,  that  he  could  not  kick  understandingly.  Accord- 
ing to  that  theory,  the  education  of  laborers  is  not  only 
useless  but  pernicious  and  dangerous.  In  fact,  it  is,  in 
some  sort,  deemed  a  misfortune  that  laborers  should 
have  heads  at  all.  Those  same  heads  are  regarded  as 
explosive  materials,  only  to  be  safely  kept  in  damp 
places,  as  far  as  possible  from  that  peculiar  sort  of  fire 
which  ignites  them.  A  Yankee  who  could  invent  a 
strong-handed  man  without  a  head  would  receive  the 
everlasting  gratitude  of  the  "mud-sill"  advocates. 

But  free  labor  says,  "No."  Free  labor  argues  that 
as  the  Author  of  man  makes  every  individual  with  one 
head  and  with  one  pair  of  hands,  it  was  probably  in- 
tended that  heads  and  hands  should  cooperate  as 
friends,  and  that  that  particular  head  should  direct  and 
control  that  pair  of  hands.  As  each  man  has  one  mouth 
to  be  fed,  and  one  pair  of  hands  to  furnish  food,  it  was 
probably  intended  that  that  particular  pair  of  hands 
should  feed  that  particular  mouth — that  each  head  is 
the  natural  guardian,  director,  and  protector  of  the 
hands  and  mouth  inseparably  connected  with  it ;  and 
that  being  so,  every  head  should  be  cultivated  and  im- 
proved by  whatever  will  add  to  its  capacity  for  perform- 
ing its  charge.  In  one  word,  free  labor  insists  on  uni- 
versal education. 

I  have  so  far  stated  the  opposite  theories  of  "mud- 
sill" and  "free-labor,"  without  declaring  any  preference 


LINCOLN  ON  AGRICULTURE  387 

of  my  own  between  them.  On  an  occasion  like  this,  I 
ought  not  to  declare  any.  I  suppose,  however,  I  shall 
not  be  mistaken  in  assuming  as  a  fact  that  the  people  of 
Wisconsin  prefer  free  labor,  with  its  natural  com- 
panion, education. 

This  leads  to  the  further  reflection  that  no  other 
human  occupation  opens  so  wide  a  field  for  the  profit- 
able and  agreeable  combination  of  labor  with  cultivated 
thought,  as  agriculture.  I  know  nothing  so  pleasant 
to  the  mind  as  the  discovery  of  anything  that  is  at  once 
new  and  valuable — nothing  that  so  lightens  and  sweetens 
toil  as  the  hopeful  pursuit  of  such  discovery.  And  how 
vast  and  how  varied  a  field  is  agriculture  for  such  dis- 
covery! The  mind,  already  trained  to  thought  in  the 
country  school,  or  higher  school,  cannot  fail  to  find 
there  an  exhaustless  source  of  enjoyment.  Every  blade 
of  grass  is  a  study ;  and  to  produce  two  where  there  was 
hut  one  is  both  a  profit  and  a  pleasure.  And  not  grass 
alone,  but  soils,  seeds,  and  seasons — hedges,  ditches,  and 
fences — draining,  droughts,  and  irrigation — plowing, 
lioeing,  and  harrowing — reaping,  mowing,  and  thresh- 
ing— saving  crops,  pests  of  crops,  diseases  of  crops,  and 
what  will  prevent  or  cure  them — implements,  utensils, 
and  machines,  their  relative  merits,  and  how  to  improve 
them — ^hogs,  horses,  and  cattle — sheep,  goats,  and 
poultry — trees,  shrubs,  fruits,  plants,  and  flowers — the 
thousand  things  of  which  these  are  specimens — each  a 
world  of  study  within  itself. 

In  all  this,  book-learning  is  available.  A  capacity 
and  taste  for  reading  gives  access  to  whatever  has 
already  been  discovered  by  others.  It  is  the  key,  or  one 
of  the  keys,  to  the  already  solved  problems.     And  not 


388  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

only  so:  it  gives  a  relish  and  facility  for  successfully 
pursuing  the  unsolved  ones.  The  rudiments  of  science 
are  available,  and  highly  available.  Some  knowledge  of 
botany  assists  in  dealing  with  the  vegetable  world — with 
all  growing  crops.  Chemistry  assists  in  the  analysis  of 
soils,  selection  and  application  of  manures,  and  in 
numerous  other  ways.  The  mechanical  branches  of 
natural  philosophy  are  ready  help  in  almost  everything, 
but  especially  in  reference  to  implements  and  machinery. 

The  thought  recurs  that  education  —  cultivated 
thought — can  best  be  combined  with  agricultural  labor, 
or  any  labor,  on  the  principle  of  thorough  work;  that 
careless,  half  performed,  slovenly  work  makes  no  place 
for  such  combination ;  and  thorough  work,  again, 
renders  sufficient  the  smallest  quantity  of  ground  to 
each  man ;  and  this,  again,  conforms  to  what  must 
occur  in  a  world  less  inclined  to  wars  and  more  devoted 
to  the  arts  of  peace  than  heretofore.  Population  must 
increase  rapidly,  more  rapidly  than  in  former  times, 
and  ere  long  the  most  valuable  of  all  arts  will  be  the  art 
of  deriving  a  comfortable  subsistence  from  the  smallest 
area  of  soil.  No  community  whose  every  member  pos- 
sesses this  art,  can  ever  be  the  victim  of  oppression  in 
any  of  its  forms.  Such  community  will  be  alike 
independent  of  crowned  kings,  money  kings,  and  land 
kings. 

But,  according  to  your  program,  the  awarding  of 
premium  awaits  the  closing  of  this  address.  Consider- 
ing the  deep  interest  necessarily  pertaining  to  that 
performance,  it  would  be  no  wonder  if  I  am  already 
heard  with  some  impatience.  I  will  detain  you  but  a 
moment  longer.     Some  of  vou  will  be  successful,  and 


LINCOLN  ON  AGRICULTURE  389 

such  will  need  but  little  philosopliy  to  take  them  home  in 
cheerful  spirits;  others  will  be  disappointed,  and  will 
be  in  a  less  happy  mood.  To  such  let  it  be  said,  "Lay 
it  not  too  much  to  heart."  Let  them  adopt  the  maxim, 
"Better  luck  next  time,"  and  then  by  renewed  exertion 
make  that  better  luck  for  themselves. 

And  by  the  successful  and  unsuccessful  let  it  be  re- 
membered that  while  occasions  like  the  present  bring 
their  sober  and  durable  benefits,  the  exultations  and 
mortifications  of  them  are  but  temporary ;  and  that  the 
victor  will  soon  be  vanquished  if  he  relax  in  his  exertion ; 
and  that  the  vanquished  this  year  may  be  victor  the 
next,  in  spite  of  all  competition. 

It  is  said  an  Eastern  monarch  once  charged  his  wise 
men  to  invent  him  a  sentence  to  be  ever  in  view,  and 
which  should  be  true  and  appropriate  in  all  times  and 
situations.  They  presented  him  the  words,  "And  this, 
too,  shall  pass  away."  How  much  it  expresses !  How 
chastening  in  the  hour  of  pride !  How  consoling  in  the 
depths  of  affliction !  "And  this,  too,  shall  pass  away." 
And  yet,  let  us  hope,  it  is  not  quite  true.  Let  us  hope, 
rather,  that  by  the  best  cultivation  of  the  physical 
world  beneath  and  around  us,  and  the  best  intellectual 
and  moral  world  within  us,  we  shall  secure  an  individual, 
social,  and  political  prosperity  and  happiness,  whose 
course  shall  be  onward  and  upward,  and  which,  while 
the  earth  endures,  shall  not  pass  away. 


XXXII 

THE  EXCELLENCES  OF  AGRICULTURE  * 

Xenophon 

"This  anecdote  I  relate  to  you  Critobulus,"  con- 
tinued Socrates,  "to  show  that  not  even  men  of  the  most 
exalted  fortune  are  contented  to  abstain  from  agricul- 
ture ;  for  the  pursuit  of  it  seems  to  be  at  once  a  means 
of  enjoyment  and  of  increasing  their  resources ;  and  it  is 
also  an  exercise  for  the  body,  such  as  to  strengthen  it 
for  discharging  the  duties  that  become  a  man'of  honor- 
able birth.  In  the  first  place,  the  earth  yields  the  food 
on  which  men  live  to  those  who  cultivate  it,  and  produces 
in  addition  things  from  which  they  receive  gratification. 
Besides  these,  it  supplies  the  flowers  which  decorate 
altars  and  statues,  and  with  which  men  adorn  them- 
selves, accompanied  with  the  most  pleasing  odors  and 
appearances;  sauces  and  animal  food,  too,  it  partly 
produces  and  partly  nourishes,  in  abundance  (for  the 
art  of  managing  cattle  is  connected  with  farming)  ;  so 
that  men  have  enough  to  propitiate  the  gods  by  sacrifi- 
cing, and  to  use  themselves.  Yet,  though  it  offers  bless- 
ings in  the  greatest  plenty,  it  does  not  permit  us  to 
take  them  in  idleness,  but  requires  us  to  accustom  our- 
selves to  endure  the  colds  of  winter  and  the  heats  of 
summer;  to  those  whom  it  exercises  in  manual  labor,  it 

*  From  Xenophon's  Economics.     Translated  by  the  Rev.  J.  S.  Watson. 

390 


EXCELLENCES  OF  AGRICULTURE      391 

gives  an  increase  of  strength ;  and  in  such  as  only  over- 
see the  cultivation  of  it,  it  produces  a  manly  vigor,  by 
requiring  them  to  rise  early  in  the  morning,  and  forcing 
them  to  move  about  with  activity ;  for  in  the  country, 
as  well  as  in  the  city,  the  most  important  matters  are 
always  done  at  a  stated  season.  Again,  if  a  man  wishes 
to  serve  his  country  as  a  horse-soldier,  farming  offers 
the  greatest  convenience  for  keeping  a  horse,  or  if  as  a 
foot-soldier,  it  keeps  the  body  robust ;  and  it  also  affords 
some  incitement  to  exertion  in  hunting  over  the  land, 
supplying  facilities  for  keeping  of  dogs,  and  support- 
ing beasts  of  game.  The  horses  and  dogs,  moreover, 
which  are  kept  by  farming,  benefit  the  farm  in  return; 
the  horse  by  carrying  his  master  early  in  the  morning 
to  the  scene  of  his  labors,  and  furnishing  him  the  means 
of  returning  late;  the  dogs  by  preventing  the  wild 
beasts  from  destroying  the  fruits  of  the  earth  and  the 
cattle,  and  by  affording  security  even  in  the  most  soli- 
tary places. 

"The  possession  of  land  also  stimulates  agriculturists, 
in  some  degree,  to  defend  their  country  in  arms,  as  the 
ground  produces  its  fruits  exposed  to  all,  for  the 
strongest  to  take  possession  of  them.  What  occupa- 
tion, too,  renders  men  more  fit  for  running,  and  throw- 
ing, and  leaping,  than  agriculture?  What  employment 
offers  men  greater  gratification  for  their  labor.''  What 
art  welcomes  the  student  of  it  with  greater  pleasure, 
offering  him  that  approaches,  indeed,  the  means  of  gain- 
ing whatever  he  desires.'*  What  occupation  receives 
strangers  with  richer  hospitality.?  Where  is  there 
greater  facility  for  passing  the  winter  amid  plenty  of 
fires,  and  warm  baths,  than  on  the  farm.''    Or  where  can 


392  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

we  spend  the  summer  more  agreeably,  by  streams,  amid 
breezes,  and  under  shade,  than  in  the  fields?  What 
other  occupation  offers  more  pleasing  first-fruits  to  the 
gods,  or  richer  banquets  on  festival  days?  What  pur- 
suit is  more  comfortable  for  a  man's  servants,  more  de- 
lightful to  his  wife,  more  attractive  to  his  children,  or 
more  gratifying  to  his  friends?  I  should  be  surprised, 
for  my  own  part,  if  any  man  of  liberal  feelings  has  met 
with  any  possession  more  pleasing  than  a  farm,  or  dis- 
covered any  pursuit  more  attractive,  or  more  conducive 
to  the  means  of  life,  than  agriculture. 

"The  earth  also  kindly  teaches  men  justice,  at  least 
such  as  are  able  to  learn ;  for  it  is  those  who  treat  her 
best  that  she  recompenses  with  the  most  numeroas 
benefits. 

"If  on  any  occasion,  moreover,  those  who  are  em- 
ployed in  agriculture  are  forced  to  quit  their  occupa- 
tions by  a  multitude  of  invading  enemies,  yet,  as  they 
have  been  bred  to  vigorous  and  manly  exertion,  and  are 
well  exercised  in  mind  and  body,  they  may,  if  the  gods 
are  not  unfavorable,  make  incursions  into  the  lands  of 
those  who  impede  their  occupations,  and  carry  off 
booty  on  which  they  may  support  themselves.  Fre- 
quently, indeed,  in  war,  it  is  safer  to  seek  a  livelihood 
with  hostile  weapons  than  with  instruments  of  agri- 
culture. 

"The  cultivation  of  the  ground,  too,  instructs  men 
to  assist  one  another ;  for  as  we  must  make  attacks  on 
enemies  with  the  aid  of  men,  so  it  is  with  aid  of  men 
that  agriculture  must  be  conducted.  He,  therefore, 
that  would  till  his  ground  properly  must  provide  him- 
self with  laborers  both  ready  to  work  and  willing  to 


EXCELLENCES  OF  AGRICULTURE      393 

obey  him;  and  he  that  leads  an  army  against  an  enemv 
must  take  similar  precautions,  rewarding  those  who  act 
as  good  soldiers  ought  to  act,  and  punishing  those  who 
are  neglectful  of  discipline.  A  husbandman  must  en- 
courage his  workmen  as  frequently  as  a  general  exhorts 
his  soldiers ;  and  slaves  require  favorable  prospects  to 
be  held  out  to  them  not  less  than  freemen,  and  indeed 
even  more,  that  they  may  be  willing  to  stay  with  their 
masters.  He  also  said  well,  who  pronounced  agricul- 
ure  to  be  the  mother  and  nurse  of  other  arts ;  for  when 
agriculture  flourishes,  all  other  pursuits  are  in  full 
vigor ;  but  when  the  ground  is  forced  to  lie  barren,  other 
occupations  are  almost  stopped,  as  well  by  land  as  by 
sea." 

When  Critobulus  had  heard  these  remarks  to  an  end, 
he  said,  "You  seem  to  me,  my  dear  Socrates,  to  say  all 
this  with  great  reason ;  but  you  have  not  observed  that 
there  are  connected  with  agriculture  many  things  which 
it  is  impossible  for  man  to  foresee ;  for  sometimes  hail, 
frost,  drought,  violent  rains,  mildew,  and  often  indeed 
other  causes,  deprive  us  of  the  fruit  of  what  has  been 
excellently  contrived  and  arranged;  and  sometimes 
disease  comes  to  carry  off,  in  the  most  pitiable  manner, 
cattle  that  have  been  bred  with  the  utmost  care." 

Socrates,  listening  to  this,  said,  "I  thought  that  you 
were  aware,  Critobulus,  that  the  gods  are  disposers  of 
affairs  in  agriculture  not  less  than  of  those  in  war ;  and 
you  see,  I  suppose,  that  those  who  are  engaged  in  the 
field  of  battle  propitiate  the  gods  before  they  come  to 
an  engagement,  and  consult  them,  with  the  aid  of  sacri- 
fices and  auguries,  to  learn  what  they  ought  or  ought 
not  to  do.    And  do  you  think  that  there  is  less  necessity 


394)  ESSAYS  ON  AGRICULTURE 

to  seek  the  favor  of  the  gods  with  regard  to  the  proceed- 
ings of  agriculture?  For  be  assured,"  added  he,  "that 
wise  men  worship  the  gods  with  a  view  to  the  preserva- 
tion of  their  fruits,  as  well  succulent  as  dry,  and  of  their 
oxen,  horses,  sheep,  and  all  their  other  possessions." 


THE  END 


THE    COUNTRY    LIFE    PRESS 
GARDEN    CITY,    N.    Y. 


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